Privacy on the Web

Filed in archive General on February 3, 2009

Erick Schonfeld had a nice piece last week on how using the web eats away at your privacy.

It's simple, really: the more you talk, the more you reveal about yourself. If you're at a party at a friend's house and you say something you wish you hadn't, people are likely to forget over time. But say it on the web and it's likely to be preserved for all future generations.

Erick is particularly interested in data. He wrote the piece on Data Privacy Day. He talks about personal info as the food of phishers and scam artists. And he's right. Put your birthday and address on Facebook, then Twitter for a a few months about the details of your personal habits. Add to that a personal blog that includes a few family history details (like your mother's maiden name). The next thing you know, someone you've never met has opened a credit card account in your name...

The privacy issue goes beyond just data, though. I participated a while back in a listserv where people really didn't understand that their thoughts on a variety of subject were being archived and could be found through most search engines. I quoted some of them in a blog post and I found out that they thought they had a lot more privacy than they actually did have.

My own sense of privacy revolves primarily around personal decisions about what to reveal and what not to reveal about myself. If you blog, you're in the same boat. In a way, we all know that a blog post is forever. Put that picture of yourself in a Speedo on Flickr and it may never go away, even if you delete it. Someone else has it saved now. We all know that. At the same time we seem to take it for granted, pretend it's not true.

The simple truth is that privacy is shrinking. And it's more than just data.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 7894341