Internet “Privacy” Doesn’t Exist

At least, not the way we assume it does.

I follow a psychologist on Twitter. Dr. Kolmes is fascinated with social media and how it impacts her clients and her profession, and her views on the professional ethics of using Twitter and social networking impressed me enough that I hit the “follow” button. And I haven’t regretted it–she posts links to papers and articles that make me think about things I haven’t before.

Like, for example, this article on how social networking sites impact the idea of privacy as we know it, and just how easy it is for predators and marketers to get hold of personal information if people insist on putting it on Facebook. Or MySpace. Or what-have-you.

Research conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of public policy and management who also spoke at the conference, has found that individuals’ notions of privacy are malleable depending on the context of an interaction. According to Acquisti, people are more likely to divulge key personal information — their photo, birthday, hometown, address and phone number — on social networking sites than they would on other web sites. His 2005 study highlighted privacy concerns such as online and physical stalking.

“People [say] privacy [is] important to them, yet they engage in behaviors that indicate a remarkable lack of concern,” Acquisti told the conference participants. “Privacy decision making and valuations are malleable,” but it’s unclear what factors lead to more disclosure. One of those factors might be a “herding effect,” he said. In one study, Acquisti found that that people will divulge information when they see others doing so. That tendency, he believes, may explain why so many people are willing to dish out personal information on the networks. (from article)

This hits on the other part of it–something I was talking about last Friday. I have Facebook and MySpace and Goodreads (oh my) pages for my readers, yes. So there’s a certain amount of my personal self that I have to make the decision about letting my readers see. But it’s not just readers who are going to have access to that information. You put it out there on someone else’s server, and you’re trusting the server company, the social networking company, and THEN you’re trusting everyone you “friend.” None of these things are private in the accepted senses of the word.

The Internet is public, but we pretend it isn’t sometimes. That pretense can be actively harmful when a predator finds an Internet watering-hole and settles down to wait.

One last chunk from that article:

Hill says a person’s pattern of behavior on various networks can reveal tell-tale signatures, similar to fingerprints — or perhaps “friendprints” — that can be used to solve a wide range of business challenges, from targeted marketing and advertising to fraud detection.

The study, titled “Building an Effective Representation for Dynamic Networks,” originated as an approach to fraud in the telecommunications industry. The authors were interested in the problem of identifying phone service subscribers who repeatedly default on their bills by signing up for service under an alias. The problem is not new. However, the focus of the paper was to show how to clearly identify a customer’s social network signature and match it to signatures created by customers who had previously defaulted. “Repetitive defaulters may be identified despite their aliases over time by their ’social network signature,’” according to the paper. (from article)

Just sit back and think about that for a second. This doesn’t just mean people who don’t pay their phone bill can be tracked. This means YOU can be tracked. Even if you don’t do anything “wrong,” the capability to track YOU down is still there. Who is going to use that capability? For what ends? How is that capability overseen by the social networks, are there guards in place to stop unethical usage?

It’s simple. There just aren’t.

People treat social networks like their friend networks out here in the real world (I almost said “meatspace”), where the tools of human perception and human cooperation evolved over thousands of years keep things (mostly) on an even keel. Networks on social-networking sites do not have a lot of the consequences meatspace (oh, what the hell) friend networks have, like shunning or instant reaction to someone’s bad behavior. It’s a recipe for disaster, and there’s all sorts of personal information floating out there to be taken advantage of.

I don’t point this out to sound alarmist. I do, however, think that a lot of authors should think long and hard about social networking sites and blogs, and decide just what they want out there in the vast public petri dish of the Internet. I also think people are going to be shocked when it becomes obvious how intrusive social networks have the potential of being, especially when their users take a certain amount of privacy for granted and yet give up highly valuable personal information at a moment’s notice.

Privacy on the Internet is mostly in your own hands. But a lot of people don’t think about it. Like sex, they just assume they’re safe. The consequences might not be as dire on the Internet as they are in bed, but is that any reason not to take precautions?

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