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Why Online Privacy Is Broken
Trailrunner7 writes "One of the more trite and oft-repeated maxims in the software industry goes something like this: We're not focusing on security because our customers aren't asking for it. They want features and functionality. When they ask for security, then we'll worry about it. Not only is this philosophy doomed to failure, it's now being repeated in the realm of privacy, with potentially disastrous effects. A quick search of recent news on the privacy front reveals that just about all of it is bad. Facebook is exposing users' live chat sessions and other data to third parties. Google is caught recording not only MAC address and SSID information from public Wi-Fi hotspots, but storing data from the networks as well. But the prevailing attitude among corporate executives in these cases seems to be summed up by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who famously said this not too long ago: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' If you look beyond the patent absurdity of Schmidt's statement for a minute, you'll find another old maxim hiding underneath: Blame the user. You want privacy? Don't use our search engine/photo software/email application/maps. That's our data now, thank you very much. Oh, you don't want your private chats exposed to the world? Sorry, you never told us that."
If we had continued improving on P2P instead of giving in to centralized servers we wouldn't be there...
I would think (and hope) that customers aren't asking for it because they're not aware of the risks, not because they don't care. Like when people stop using debit cards everywhere only after their card gets duplicated.
"Government is like fire; a handy servant, but a dangerous master." -- George Washington
The actions made by these companies, right or wrong, are legal. You can't expect companies (or governments... or individuals) to stop doing this if it is convenient, profitable, and legal. We need some legislation that basically says that they can't publish, transmit, or sell personal information without prior consent. And that any such release - intentional or accidental - must be reported to the individual.
In the US, we have such legislation but it only applies to medical information. That is silly - there's just no reason for companies to be giving this stuff out.
Actually, let me go a step further -- they shouldn't even store this information. I walked into Target and returned some merchandise. It was really simple -- because they kept my credit card on file. I never told them they could do that. As I walked away, they said "Thank you [my name]" so they knew that too. Why is it okay for a store clerk to have this? Why did my credit card company give out the credit card number and name? They don't need that. They need to know "User 81234756897 authorized purchase for $57.34 to vendor 9234857 on 2010/05/23 17:24 with authorization #239485768934." That's it. It should have been illegal for my credit card company to even give the information. Then for Target to store it. As a nice side-benefit, this also prevents fraud since no one in the chain can use my credit card.
There is no online privacy, anything you do online is public. If you would not say it in public do not say it online.
Use the same arguments as Intellectual Property proponents. Everything I say and write belongs to me. You have to ask permission to hear it.
it's all laziness. Laziness on the part of the companies, and laziness on the part of the users of said services. A lot of people leave their stuff wide-open for the world to see. I think it's because overall, people like to feel like they're important, and their written words need to be shared. From the company perspective though, it seems to me the majority of security flaws are due to two things: 1) greed over content control, and laziness.
One of the more trite and oft-repeated maxims in the software industry goes something like this: We're not focusing on security because our customers aren't asking for it. They want features and functionality. When they ask for security, then we'll worry about it.
Let me counter that with one the more trie and oft-repeated maxims from businessmen in the 80s: Don't you worry about security, let me worry about blank.
Not only is this philosophy doomed to failure, it's now being repeated in the realm of privacy, with potentially disastrous effects.
And yet Facebook thrives and not until last week did Google offer secure searching and they're a giant. Sounds to me like companies that don't worry about privacy are doing pretty well -- maybe even the industry leaders. Maybe they're on to something about it being unimportant to the consumer?
A quick search of recent news on the privacy front reveals that just about all of it is bad.
Oh give me a break. Ninety percent of news stories are negative. Because it sells eyeballs. Really, do you expect a news article about the really great privacy that Slashdot offers Anonymous Cowards to appear? When privacy works, it's not news. Hell, when privacy is kept intact people don't even know. Your reasoning here is severely flawed.
Facebook is exposing users' live chat sessions and other data to third parties.
Yep, marketing's a bitch, ain't it? But then again, we're getting Facebook for free and I don't think there's been any case of someone suffering serious harm from Facebook dumping a chat to marketing. Certainly unsettling but has there been any sort of actual case of abuse and harm to the user? I use Facebook and I don't care much. I'm putting my data on their servers and they had me agree to some BS impossible to read ToS so I just mitigate that by keeping anything sensitive off it. If Diaspora takes off -- hey, great -- but until I can communicate with all my friends and family on it who are half a continent away no thanks.
Google is caught recording not only MAC address and SSID information from public Wi-Fi hotspots, but storing data from the networks as well.
"Caught?" That's funny. If you don't want to "catch" people "recording" your shit, stop broadcasting it and put some encryption on it and use a hidden SSID. You know, like the hundred or so Slashdot posts have pointed out.
But the prevailing attitude among corporate executives in these cases seems to be summed up by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who famously said this not too long ago: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
"Prevailing?" So prevailing that you need to reference a half a year old quote that is about all we have of that attitude. That's the predominant force out there? Care to come up with more companies using that sentiment? Care to put that quote into context for me? Put the pressure on them and the companies will change. Fact is that nobody's putting any pressure on them so why should they stop doing something which allows them to better market to you with ads and make more money?
If you look beyond the patent absurdity of Schmidt's statement for a minute, you'll find another old maxim hiding underneath: Blame the user. You want privacy? Don't use our search engine/photo software/email application/maps. That's our data now, thank you very much. Oh, you don't want your private chats exposed to the world? Sorry, you never told us that.
[citation needed] Prosecutor is leading the witness. Seriously, you're putting words into their mouths. Evil, yes they are. Saying that they claim your data is now theirs by way of their actions is ridiculous. Then from there y
My work here is dung.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who famously said this not too long ago: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
There are very few things that I don't want anyone to know, there are a host of things that I don't want everyone to know.
You know it's funny. These guys spin the word privacy so much that the idea of sharing becomes twisted. Yes I want to share; But with friends, not with faceless businesses so they can solicit me. The idea that these two things are inseparable is idiotic. I share my personal pictures with friends. That doesn't mean I want them beamed to the world.
All of these sites need to stop playing stupid. They know wtf is going on and they know what people want. The problem is their customers are not their users, so the users get treated like chattle to feed the machine.
You want longevity? Heed the wants of your users. It's not hard, and hell you may even make a dime off of it.
Could a lawyer please enlighten us about the definition of 'privacy' US Constitution and in US Legislation, specifically for the electronic media (if available)? TIA.
Both the Facebook chat bug and the Google recordings are unintentional mistakes. If they show anything, it's that completely bug free engineering is hard to do. I think we knew that already.
The Schmidt quote is just a statement about how this flawed world is, not how it should be.
The concept of privacy in these times and the future is a very interesting topic, but this post is just a whiny mini rant, not a serious attempt to understand the real issues.
I can remember very vividly GM and Ford (and Chrysler and even Packard) saying basically the same things about cars - they could put in safety features, but they didn't because there was no customer demand for it. This was, mind, when cars had metal dashboards and spear-your-heart driving wheels. This went on until the Federal Government started forcing changes, and until Volvo and other foreign manufacturers started making sales touting safety. I expect to see a similar story arc about piracy on-line.
The whole idea of "if you don't want it public, don't put it on the internet" always reminds me of this Onion video:
Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village
http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy,14358/
There's no reason that we can't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, even in our online lives. Especially from a technical standpoint. If I share some photos with 10 people, and one of those people decides to copy that photo into an email and send it off to 100 people, then that's a social failure, not a technical one. People I trusted betrayed my trust, on a social level.
But on a technical level, I should be able to share videos or photos or journal posts with a small group of trusted people, and be reasonably secure in the idea that only they will see them. That advertisers won't have access to that photo, that an api won't be able to pull the data without permission, etc. There's nothing extraordinary about that requirement, and that it's treated as absurd and unreasonable shows how far we've fallen from a basic perspective on internet privacy.
Open source can fill the gap. Our incentive, as open source software developers, is to provide the best software possible, and to not skimp on important features like privacy and security. We aren't trying to cater to advertisers, or to build empires based on fads and hype. I've been working on an open source, distributed social networking alternative to Facebook (and Myspace and other "walled gardens") that called Appleseed that focuses on strong privacy.
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/
But most of all, by distributing these services, and allowing users to cancel their profile on one site, sign up for another site, and plug right back into the network they lost, it creates a level of competition so that social networking sites *have* to listen to the concerns of their users. They can't take them for granted. Not just in social networking, if we can continue push for open standards, open protocols, open platforms, etc., it means we have some leverage when a popular service decides to privilege it's revenue stream over the privacy of it's users.
But not on Slashdot, right? Right?
There's no technical way to guarantee privacy and anonymity... quite the opposite: technology should be used to increase transparency.
Privacy is to be respected. If someone doesn't respect your privacy, then by all means take socio-political-legal action. But you sort of have to implicitly trust your infrastructure provider - be it your ISP, your phone company, your email provider, etc. to not abuse your trust. And by all means don't use that infrastructure to transmit anything you don't trust them with.
The good thing about the increased transparency the technology has provided us is that now it's easier to find out if our trust has been abused.
There's no identifiable information in your MAC or SSID. So big deal there. If you don't want your packets sniffed, it's easy enough to enable encryption. If you don't want your emails shared with marketers, no one is forcing you to use GMail. No one is forcing you to use Facebook for that matter either. These companies provide a service that's free to you, but in exchange for your privacy. If you don't know that's the deal, you have no one to complain to but yourself.
It's really quite trivial to maintain your privacy on the internet. Use encryption whenever possible, and don't use services from companies who's business model is selling your information. Problem solved.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When are we going to start taking responsibility for our own privacy? If it's a concern to you then do what's necessary to protect yourself.
I just don't get why this is suddenly such a big deal. What exactly did Google do that other's couldn't have? If you leave your wi-fi unencrypted and someone accesses it it's somehow THEIR fault???
If you don't want people to know your business start by not announcing everything you do in a public forum.
I'm so over so-called "cloud" computing and social networking sites, webmail, etc.
I've started to roll my own IT infrastructure. All it takes is a domain name, some time and skill (or the desire to acquire said skills) and away you go.
i will no longer use anyone else for email, etc. I'll host my own domain name, my own blog, my own email. I'm going to own my data, not someone else.
Blame the user. You want privacy? Don't use our search engine/photo software/email application/maps. That's our data now, thank you very much. Oh, you don't want your private chats exposed to the world? Sorry, you never told us that."
I am all for the world deserves more privacy, privacy laws should exist, etc..."trust" me! But jokes aside, there will always be entities that operate outside what we consider the ideal privacy as long as they are allowed to do so. The problem is not that of each company's policy: since when did we decide that each respective business should and would always hold itself to a higher standard?
In the corporate world these days, one of the common phrases to encompass a moral code is: "if you wouldn't want your mother reading it on the front page of the newspaper, you probably should not be doing it." That is all fine and dandy as they say for a corporate environment and ethics, but this does not necessarily apply to my personal browsing. The problem therefore, as I argue, is that of a conflict of interests:
---We want transparency with privacy. Security and privacy in a corporate viewpoint need to be high. Certified public accountants are held liable for transactions, and audits happen...very often. If the security system itself does not allow tracing of fraud, or even a way to raise a "red flag" of sorts, well then the security system is flawed in the eyes of the auditor.
---We want privacy on personal matters. This fact alone can contradict not in implementation or even feasibility, but perhaps in theory - which is enough to cause problems. As a hypothetical CEO of a corporation, I do not have much understanding of personal privacy of internet actions...I have to deal with lawyers (yes those people...), auditors, and general liability. When I am told that I need to up user privacy and not record any data, etc... this may go against what I fundamentally see my company doing!
I mean to say here that there is a bridge of "thought" between privacy and liability...even though this should not apply to the end user: us.
We assume that big companies are playing fast and loose with our personal information and that there's little we can do about it.
On another front, many Americans are complacent...we know this to be a fact! I don't care about Republican this, Democrat that, Ron Paul, whatever...the world will always have ignorant individuals. Individuals will except a sacrifice of privacy and that overused term liberty in exchange for a bit of "piece-of-mind", and in many cases they just don't care.
A quick search of recent news on the privacy front reveals that just about all of it is bad.
Lastly, I'd like to say, outside of the fact that bad news means more audience, that this all is bad philosophy might not be what is needed. Sure the breaches on my personal privacy and what I like to coin as my "personal liberty" are disturbing...but in a general sense unless the actual source of the problem, a complete lack of laws protecting our privacy, is brought to light, I do not expect any real change.
I agree with this posting in the fact I want privacy and I have little patience...but I just wanted to play the devil's advocate on Slashdot for a bit...
My question to you all: How can we balance security and corporate liability today? && How could the general public be informed the "real" issues, not just the latest privacy breach?
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
I guess I'm just not seeing what the big deal is with Google scanning and recording MAC addresses and SSID's. These are being broadcast in the open such that anyone driving by can see them. How is this an infringement of privacy? It is akin to undressing while standing in your front yard and then complaining when the neighbors watch you.
Please note that anything broadcast over public / unencrypted WiFi is akin to standing in the middle of town square and shouting out loud. The latter is more obvious, but it's basically the same thing.
You can also NOT create a Google/Facebook account, NOT save those cookies until they expire and NOT use unencrypted or semi-encrypted wifi APs. But hey, it's not a good article if it doesn't try to scare everyone. Try to see the big picture, it's still pretty damn hard to create an accurate and detailed profile of someone you don't know who just happens to issue a bunch of HTTP requests to your webservers. Also, unless you're in China or something, no one is going to look at your web habits. Google is only interested in targeting ads at you, so you can have a nice search engine whenever you need it.
Just be careful what you do, sensationalist articles like this are just that and it pisses me off. It does nothing to actually inform people what to do but scare, it only briefly mentions a problem with Facebook that (after clicking through) appears to be a vulnerability that was discovered and fixed 19 days ago. Woopdedoo.
TL;DR: Nothing to see here, move along.
The real "private" problem here is that every time I hear somebody whinge about Google collecting data that was being BROADCAST on an OPEN CHANNEL I want to rip off said complainer's privates to ensure that level of stoopid is kept out of the gene pool. But that might just be me.
Is it time to put aluminum foil on our heads yet? It would be if we let these privacy screamers run the parade.
Sorry, but please take some responsibility for yourself. If in fact there is something so important that you don't want anyone to know, then don't do it online, PERIOD. This is nothing new and there are very few if any technological measures that can ever be deployed that will guarantee that your privacy / security will ever be secure. The level of hassle involved with making really improbable-to-break security is really hard and requires diligence on the part of the individual. If Vista taught us anything, it is that users do NOT want real security. They want to do what they want and not worry about how the system does it. Well guess what? The system isn't perfect and neither is the security. We live with the imperfection for the sake of simplicity.
"Facebook is exposing users' live chat sessions"
This was a defect in their IM system. This could happen in EVERY SINGLE store and forward based messaging system (AKA basically all of them).
If you expect each facebook user to generate their own Public/Private key then you're diluted (plus it breaks the online chat thing unless you're sharing your private key with facebook which would defeat the purpose).
If you expect software to be perfect then you're an idiot.
"and other data to third parties"
You agree to this when you clicked through their EULA (which is your fault).
"MAC address and SSID information from public Wi-Fi hotspots ..."
Data was wide open (which is your fault) and the company erroneously captured it.
Bye!
...Statements of Privacy Policy do. When a site gives explicit guidelines, to which you agree, and THEN they erode or drop the wall that THEY TOLD YOU was there, THAT is evil.
I'm looking at you, Facebook.
Google is an advertising/marketing company. Their motives and actions are consistent with advertising/marketing companies. They seem to be more "generous" than many other advertising/marketing companies in that they give away better "swag" but they are still an advertising/marketing company... and a very successful one at that.
Within their motives you can determine your expectations of them... and altruism isn't one of them.
If we had continued improving on P2P instead of giving in to centralized servers we wouldn't be there...
Alright, I know that a few projects like Diaspora are supposed to utilize this but I am still largely confused by this. Peer to peer implies that by owning my own personal data, it is on my home computer or laptop. Some people only have a laptop and some people like to power down their machines when they're away. So this seems to imply that you need to either have this disseminated to other peers in order for people to access it while you're offline. On top of that if you're disseminating photos or videos, this could get crazy for upload speed. So then your stuff is on another person's machine and who knows if they didn't just take and modified the Diaspora code to record all your stuff. Can you trust their node anymore than Facebook? Sure, it might be encrypted but it's hard to believe that it wouldn't be susceptible to a man in the middle attack or eventually crack the encryption by brute force. So you're kind of at that point back to the same problem as you are with entrusting Google or Facebook with your data. Otherwise you need to pay for a dedicated hosting server and they're not going to be cheap if you're miss popular with thousands of photos and that's not really P2P.
So how was P2P supposed to fix this problem? Especially for people with just a laptop or even like my parents who have a dial up connection out on a farm house with very tiny upload bandwidth. I'm just not getting a clear picture of how the average person would handle this.
My work here is dung.
If you don't want anyone knowing about something then you should not be doing it. Give me one example to the contrary.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
The news is that it's not new news, but rather a trend that's been apparent for nearly a decade..
http://www.softxs.ch/alan/essays/googlebomb.html
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
IANAL but privacy is not explicit in the US constitution; however the Supremes have found that it is implicitly there; e.g., the Fourth amendment is about privacy even though it doesn't contain the word "privacy." You might appreciate the Wikipedia article.
$META_SIG_JOKE
The reason companies don't do more to protect your privacy is that they earn their living from violating your privacy. Google uses all the data it gathers from your searches, email, chats, ad clicks and the like to target ads at you. Facebook does the same. All of the behavioral targeting ad nets pay more to publishers because they are tracking you and gathering detailed information about you from multiple sources. There is BIG money in hoping you aren't paying attention and don't know or understand all of this.
Think of this analogy. If Google asked you to give up your right of free speech and let them censor what you read and send in order to use Gmail there would be a revolt and no one would use the service. But without asking they are taking away your right to privacy when you use any of their services or browse any site where they place an ad and that is just about everywhere.
So what does dip-shmidt not want people to know that he 'maybe' shouldn't be doing?
Should we not be exercising our democratic and shareholder rights by voting in private ballots? Maybe Mr Schmidt spent too long doing business with the Chinese government? Maybe? Pfft!
I worked at a financial institution, this is completely incorrect. Your liability is limited by law to $50, and most small banks and credit unions just limit it to -0-. Just make sure you have email alerts on so you know your card is being abused & call your bank & police if so.
http://usa.visa.com/personal/security/visa_security_program/zero_liability.html
http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-1350.html
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
It's not defined in the US constitution except in relation to government investigations and entities acting on behalf of the Government.
Eric Schmidt, who famously said this not too long ago: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
Less famous than the quote was the context: "All online services hold some amount of data, and the Patriot Act allows the government to access this data, so it's best for you to keep it offline"; but of course reasonable and helpful suggestions don't make good headlines...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
A quick search of recent news on the privacy front reveals that just about all of it is bad.
To paraphrase Peep Show:
Nancy:Why don't they ever talk about all the buses that made it safely?
Mark:Yes, I suppose the news should just be a dispassionate account of all the events of the day - except it would take forever.
Surprise surprise, the media only reports on data leaks, hacks, privacy infringements. Because who wants to hear "Today, x00,000 online businesses took over $Xbn in a completely secure manner and did not store any personally identifiable information. A further x00,000 required registration from their customers but have a well-defined privacy policy.".
Most people don't ask for security because they already assume there is a certain minimum security. The vast majority of things people do is very heavily regulated, though government, industry codes and at a minimum market forces. It's also deeply implicit in corporate branding - the whole point of which is "trust us".
People like to make so much of the Internet into an analog of the so called "digital town square". The irony is, in the town square, everybody can see you and know who you are.
Many are up in arms about "online privacy" forgetting that what they are really trying to do is make something that is essentially public private.
I've never been under the impression that anything I access via a web browser or other network service is anything but public. I've never trusted that Google or anyone else would protect my data and I don't create Internet artifacts that would embarrass me.
Look, would go around your neighborhood asking people about strange fetishes, your strange wart, or about anything else that you'd prefer people not know about you? No.
So why expect that every piece of information that you put on the Internet should be so guarded?
Privacy does not make money, in fact, it costs money. Why risk the profit$ of your $hareholders?
Fix this and we will see privacy matter. Till then, tough luck.
Giant Douche: We've got spirit, yes we do; Giant Douches me and you!
Turd Sandwich: We've got spirit, yes we do; we are sandwiches filled with poo!
With the episode concluding with:
PETA: But Stan, why on earth wouldn't you want to vote?
Stan: I think voting is great; I just didn't care this time because it was between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
PETA: But Stan, don't you know... it's always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Sorry, please ignore the first "not." Yeesh.
$META_SIG_JOKE
Just why would anyone connect the concept of privacy with chatting with another person. Anything that you share with another person is pretty much public information. If it is private keep it to yourself and stop trying to control the entire world that surrounds you.
Why should they have to ask for it?
Why isn't our private information considered intellectual property? Corporations try to make every aspect of their business protected, why should consumers do the same? I guess it would require a Supreme Court that not only are corporations considered "people" but that people are considered people.
A corporation can distribute data on a DVD or CD and yet claim that it should be illegal for me to copy and pass that data along. Why shouldn't I be able to give my private information to companies that I want to do business with and expect the same sort of protections?
I'm proposing the People Are Almost As Important As Corporations Act of 2010. I wonder how many legislators I'd be able to get to sign on as co-sponsors.
You are welcome on my lawn.
At least when it comes to privacy.
The first is the one of the computer clued, slightly paranoid geek. He knows just what info gets around the net, and that the net never forgets (if it doesn't want to). In other words, be careful what you release into the world because it can be snooped, recorded and altered and soon you're a meme without a chance to stop it.
The second is the one of what I find in younger users, a complete lack of oversight and wariness and a rather blatantly ignorant handling of privacy problems. They either don't know about the possible problems or genuinely don't care. Teenagers and young adults exchanging their sex stories through services that are anything but secure and posting videos of themselves on YouTube that even I would consider embarrassing (and there's very little that embarrasses me... but I'd NEVER show my face online!), and they don't even seem to care or understand that these videos will NEVER EVER cease to circulate. They have zero control over it.
And finally there's people like my dad who are paranoid enough that he doesn't answer the phone with his name (as is customary and a courtesy thing here) because then someone could connect his name with his phone number if he just called without knowing whose cell it is. He doesn't sign up for anything, never uses his real name and doesn't even open pages like YouTube and Facebook because he thinks that alone gives them any and all info about him.
And slowly I start to think my dad's got it right...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This dance has been in full swing for a while now and seems not to be going anywhere but round and round, which is OK as far as dancing goes. There are informed people who have made informed posts from various countries but I keep coming back to two main points. One: if social sites, or, any person or company is profiting from your personal information then that information has value. If your personal information has value and you contract for it's use then it's up to you to limit the use the other contracting party can make of your personal information and the consideration you should receive for giving up your personal information. Capacity (old enough to contract), Consideration (value received) and Agency (legal right to contract for the goods and services) are fundamental. Basic contract law, like basic statistics, is fundamental to negotiating one's way in a modern world. It must be part of any grade school curriculum. Evidently most people are as woefully ignorant of the basics of contract law as they are of statistics and aren't able to competently navigate a modern market place. One option might be for everyone to incorporate and seed their Me corp. with their private information as an asset. I recognize this is in some ways an outlandish proposition but OTOH it may be a good way to instruct individuals from the age of majority in how to conduct their affairs in a market place where contracts have an air of sanctity and much legal weight. Secondly, (just as an aside I don't have a face book account, no myspace, no youtube) the whole social networking scene reminds me of ancient news reels from the 20s and 30s when people sat atop flagpoles and swallowed live goldfish just to get their mugs front and centre on a newsreel and make a splash in the shallow end of the new medium. Don't dismiss the possibility that all they big market cap social networking sites will just die off like personal web sites from the late 90s. As people realize they're being ripped off and as people become versed in technology the reliance on big social sites might fade as fast as they appeared and the content they hosted will be, for the most part, lost and forgotten.
ideopath @ play
So based on google, Palin's emails and their executive emails should be open to the public and we should stop the lawsuit.
Google employes that read this dig into the network and post Eric's emails to the world, lets see how he feels about a private conversation with his wife or friends being google by everyone.
Sure I don't always do good things, but I also don't want everyone to be able to see my kids photos. Or my mom to see my private sexy chat with my wife. Or some burgular being able to find out I plan on taking a vacation for a week, and can't find anyone to dog sit, so he is getting shipped of to boarding school.
Privacy is there to protect us from people that may want to get sensitive information as well.
Your customers are not asking about it because they assumed you've handled that.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Such systems would use public key cryptography. What is shared is the data, not private keys. Friends would share public keys, and trade data encrypted with those keys. Only the owner of the private key would be able to decrypt the data. Privacy would be ensured by (a) only friending people who weren't out to get you, and (b) selecting what is available to any particular friend.
I'm looking forward to your printing your social security number, birthdate, name,
bank routing numbers, and credit card data here, "alienized". You just said you would,
since there is nothing wrong with having those numbers, right?
Someone putting their drunken photos up on Facebook for all their friends to see is not a privacy violation. It's opt in and no different than taking the photos and showing your friends. Yes, people have too many friends who aren't friends, and yes sharing that information is probably questionable, but sharing it is perfectly within the right of the individual and not a privacy violation. Facebook constantly changing their privacy policies and settings so that people get to see your drunken photos who couldn't see them when you put them up, that's a privacy violation. If we don't separate those issues then we'll never win the privacy battle because no one will understand how someone voluntarily sharing their information is a privacy issue.
Google is just another problem all together, and one I'm not sure there is a solution to. Google has always been the way google is, but because they offer really good products a lot of us seem to forget. Analytics and the search history was bad, street View should probably never have been allowed, cool as it is, and this whole wi-fi thing is just absolutely obscene. Just the fact that they were collecting anything let alone the fact that they collected extra. Might have to change my default search engine to Bing.
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
Cool, it's going on YouTube.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Come on folks use Linux and don't be a retard all your life, MS wins in Ads budget only. Besides the Direct X monopoly they are allowed to run for selling you all out LOL, they pretty much have consistently gotten worse as a predatory company fueled by their Gov license to steal. Learn linux and then just change your MAC and hostname when using Wifi etc and actually you will be quite hard to identify.
Who uses Windows ?
Morons who don't know any better thats who.
Within their motives you can determine your expectations of them... and altruism isn't one of them.
Not exactly, though.
Thanks for the clarification. Not that in Europe things are any better, but IMHO if privacy does not get explicit in any constitution, then there is no hope of getting a human right established as such.
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It's not online privacy that's broken. All that's changing is people's awareness (or more importantly lack of) of what privacy means in the digital connected world.
Street view is a good example, no one bothered to drive around the world taking 360 pictures of everything and logging the gps coords, so before Google did it, that information just wasn't accessible but more importantly it wasn't private either. By making it easily accesible to all, made people jump to outragous claims of privacy invasions. But afaik there isn't a single country where the roads aren't owned by the 'public'. So everyone has the right to go down a street and 'look' and so the drunks, cats in windows and people leaving sex stores with Black Mamba dongs where doing so in public and could have been seen by anybody. Just because Google 'looked' and stored what they saw, doesn't change this fact. If you don't want Google or anybody else to see what your doing, don't do it in a public or publicly visible space. You've never had the right to stop people looking through your windows, but you do have the right to block those windows, that's your choice.
The wifi mac/ssid issue is similar, you are publicly broadcasting those bits of information, anybody can retrieve them from the 'public' electromagnetic waves and store it. You decided to make those bits of data public when you chose to use WiFi tech, the fact you (and a lot of others) don't understand or care how WiFi works is irrelevant. Again you have the choice not to use WiFi.
Similar with FaceBook, you are choosing to publish information to a third-party. At the end of day it doesn't matter what privacy you thought you'd agreed to when you hit 'submit'. You've choosen to make it less private.
I think it boils down to: "People are slowly realising just because no-one gathered or analysed the information before, doesn't make that information private."
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
Facebook is to a user... A way to reconnect with friends and family.
Facebook is to Zuckerberg... A way to have users give away all their information for free, and then charge advertising companies out the nose for the data.
Why can't we just get rid of the middle man and sell our personal info to the companies ourselves?