Entries from October 2009 ↓

In response to criticism from Canadian Privacy Comissioner Jennifer Stoddart, Facebook has tweaked some of its privacy settings to include easier to read language and more specific details on privacy controls. Facebook has also opened up its new privacy policy for feedback, asking users to leave their  suggestions at the official Facebook Blog.

Here are the three most important highlights via the Facebook Blog:

• Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information.
• Facebook is not just a website. It is also a service for sharing your information on Facebook-enhanced applications and websites. You can control how you share information with those third-party applications and websites through your application settings and you can learn more about how information is shared with them on our About Platform page. You can also limit how your friends share your information with applications through your privacy settings.
• Facebook is a free service supported primarily by advertising. We will not share your information with advertisers without your consent. We allow advertisers to select characteristics of users they want to show their advertisements to and we use the information users share with us to serve those advertisements.

In the past, we’ve praised Facebook for its efforts to improve privacy on the site, and it’s good to see them continuing to evolve to meet new privacy concerns. However, it is also interesting to note that this change only came about after external pressure. It is important for all Internet users to work in tandem with elected and appointed leaders like Commissioner Stoddart to ensure that our privacy and personal data is secured. Change doesn’t happen spontaneously. In order to effect positive change, we must demand personal data privacy.

Here at ReputationDefender we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of Internet privacy and online reputation management issues. To this end, we frequently engage with other organizations in advocating the government for stronger and more transparent Internet policies.

Recently, the Internet Keep Safe Coalition, which is the leading advocacy organization for children’s Internet safety, asked us to draft a number of recommendations to present before the Federal Communications Commission. Having worked successfully with iKeepSafe in the past, we were more than happy to accommodate their request.

We believe that our six recommendations, which we have shared below, will help make the Internet a safer and more productive place for children and teens, and we are pleased to have the iKeepSafe Coalition present them to the FCC.

1. Educate parents about the dangers of permanent digital memory, about how schools and admissions offices look at online content and behavior, about bullying and harassment and about personal information that can be found online.
2. Require plain language disclosures: Websites aimed at under-13 minors must disclose in plain language what information that collect, how long they store it, and who receives it.
3. Require a data forgetting policy: Websites must have and disclose a plan for how to securely delete information that is no longer relevant–including marketing information and in-game/in-site interactions. Websites must have a comprehensive plan that weighs the costs and benefits of keeping data.
4. Require sites to have an anti-bullying/anti harassment program: Social interaction on websites aimed at under-13 minors must be actively monitored  by a real trusted human to ensure there is not bullying or abuse.
5. Require sites to have an anti-predator program: Websites aimed at under-13 minors must actively monitor logins and social interactions to prevent adults from stalking, etc.
6. Encourage sites to provide easy parental notifications: Websites aimed at under-13 minors should easily and freely allow parents (upon sufficient proof of identity) to monitor and review their child’s online activity.

ReputationDefender also worked with iKeepSafe to develop a separate set of recommendations for parents (found below). It is our hope that these tips will help parents connect with their kids about Internet issues and foster a stronger and more responsibly minded generation of Internet users.

1. Begin talking to your children about online safety when they are young. If you start the dialogue early, and keep open lines of conversation with your children, you can effectively educate them on Internet issues as they arise, rather than having to scramble to fix a mistake after it occurs.
2. Monitor your child’s Internet use as much as possible. One way to do this is to keep the family computer in an open space instead of giving them a personal laptop. Remember, when your child accesses something inappropriate on the Internet, it typically isn’t because they are trying to do something “wrong.” They are simply being kids and exploring the online world.
3. Regularly search for information about your child online. By doing regular searches, you can make sure nobody has posted inappropriate information about them.
4. If your child is participating in community game sites, beware of information that is made visible to the world. Interaction within most “kid” sites should not be made visible to Google or any other index. There is no reason why anyone outside the gaming community should see it.
5. Google your child and review his/her results when getting ready to apply to school. With 54% of college admission officers using search engines to learn about potential applicants, it is imperative that your child doesn’t have anything that could hurt their chances of getting accepted to college.

Recently, the popular social media technology website Mashable joined forces with CNN.com to provide technology and social media news. As part of the arrangement, Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore will be writing a weekly column for CNN. This morning, Cashmore came out with a bang for his first column, making the bold proclamation that “Privacy is dead.” If you’re going to write a column for CNN, you might as well make it worth talking about, right?

From Cashmore’s article:

Privacy is dead, and social media hold the smoking gun.

Photo-sharing site Flickr made a brave decision in its early development: By default, photos would be public. Though ambitious at the time, the choice now seems obvious. What value do photos have when they’re not shared?

Twitter followed suit: Its private accounts are rare, meaning Twitter’s fire-hose of updates is becoming an invaluable stream of the world’s consciousness (incidentally, this month saw that stream licensed to both Microsoft and Google to bolster their search efforts).

Even Facebook, which once held fast to its model of private sharing among close friends, is pushing an “everyone” button that makes your updates public.

[...]

We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency: With hundreds of TV channels, billions of Web sites, podcasts, radio shows, music downloads and social networking, our attention is more fragmented than ever before.

Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value. They’ll be the richest, the most successful, the most connected, capable and influential among us. We’re all publishers now, and the more we publish, the more valuable connections we’ll make.

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity.

First off, congratulations to Pete for writing his first column for CNN. Mashable is the best place on the web for the most up-to-date information on social media technology. It’s great to see the site expanding and attaching itself to such a wellknown and respected name in news.

That being said, I think Pete misses the point somewhat in his column. For Pete and others like him, who live and breath social media, privacy is most certainly dead. That’s because they chose to kill it by signing up by sharing their lives online. I too fall into this group. In addition to writing here at the ReputationDefender Blog, I also have my own personal blog and am a contributor to numerous other websites. I chose to be proactive in how I appear online and (thus far) am happy with the results.

There are others, however, who don’t get to choose how their name appears online. Rather, they have that choice made for them. Sometimes, it is as simple as a people search database sharing their telephone or e-mail information online. Other times, a person may have their name slandered online by a malicious and, more importantly, anonymous attacker. To men and women who would prefer to live their lives offline, and “fade into a lonely obscurity” as Pete puts it, the reality that there are people out there using their good name against their will is a terrifying prospect.

To these men and women, who represent a sizable chunk of our population, the need for stricter privacy controls and more accountability for defamatory online speech is one of the most urgent issues they face today. We’ve already seen court rulings begin defining the limits of anonymous speech online, not to mention the world’s leading Internet organizations being grilled before Congress on behavioral marketing. In other words, while privacy may be dead, the debate over privacy is still very much alive.

Yesterday, Google rolled out its latest search innovation. Dubbed Google Social Search, the new feature integrates public content from your online social circle into search results. Check out this demo video from Google to see Social Search in action.

On its face, Social Search is another interesting step toward realizing Google’s goal of fully personalized search results. Many in the social media sphere, such as Ars Technica, have praised the feature for bringing more relevant and useful information to search. Still others, however, have reacted more negatively. In a recent column for Computerworld, David Coursey explained why Social Search gives him the “creeps,” saying,

“I am not accusing Google of doing anything illegal or even fattening. But, the company is gathering huge amounts of information about every user and has the ability, inclination, and economic incentives to turn it into minutely detailed profiles of what who we are, what we do, and how we think.

Google isn’t alone in this, just looking at my Facebook and Twitter posts would tell you a lot about me. Still, Google is in a class of its own and I am concerned that current law and practice doesn’t provide enough protection for either privacy or individual liberty.

By giving us “free stuff” like e-mail, voice mail, search results, applications, collaboration, analytics, etc., Google knows more about us than we may easily be able to remember about ourselves. And Google never forgets.

Today, that’s not a problem (that we know of). Tomorrow, we may come to wish we’d stopped Google in its tracks and placed limits on its ability to aggregate personal information.”

So, what should YOU think about Social Search?

Social Search may indicate Google is one step closer to world dominance, but that’s not the most important issue right now. The question you should be asking is, “What does this mean for my online reputation?” From a privacy perspective, Social Search doesn’t provide users with any information that isn’t already accessible online. Rather, Social Search just makes that information easier to find. Of course, you might not want your information to be easy to find and therein lies the problem.

If you think that that spontaneous blog post you wrote three years ago complaining about your job/spouse/neighbor won’t be seen by anyone, think again. As search tools continue to evolve, it’s becoming easier and easier for individuals to access deeply buried content. In other words, you should always think before you post anything to the Internet. The web is not a closed community. If you put something online, you should expect that people are going to see it. Google, Bing, and other search engines exist to make web content easier to find. Make sure they find web content that you’re proud of.

A recent article in the New York Times addressed the sensitive practice of posting photos of your children online.  Many parents find themselves using the good graces of modern technology, in the form of a digital camera and a Flickr or Picasa account, to share their family milestones with friends and relatives around the globe.  The article gives dual perspectives on the issue:  there is a very real risk that that photos you post of your kids online may be viewed by others or even stolen and misused, but the common fear that those photos might be used by pedophiles to harm your children is highly unlikely:

“Research shows that there is virtually no risk of pedophiles coming to get kids because they found them online,” said Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute. While the debate makes this crime seem common, he said, all the talk is really just “techno-panic.”

The Times interviewed several parent-bloggers who shared their personal advice to avoid having photos stolen, including adding a personal watermark to any publicly published photos on the Web.

Parents also warn that the biggest risk of posting photos of your kids (with their friends) is that other parents might lash back at you for sharing photos publicly.  ReputationDefender recommends asking permission to publish photos of friends, family, and others online prior to doing so, and if you want to monitor the spread of your kids’ photos and personal content on the Web, try MyChild today!  We’ll alert you when we find photos or personal information on blogs, social networks, and throughout the deep Web.