Teens, Social Media, and Privacy

antdude writes "Pew Internet reports that: 'Teens are sharing more info about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information. Despite taking these privacy-protective actions, teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data.'"

Comments

Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[ShanghaiBill]

Why is it a bad decision? The more advertisers know about me, the more likely I am to see ads for things I am actually interested in.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

If you see ads, i guess you might feel that way. I don't see ads, therefore it does me absolutely no good for them to have personal information about me.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're against free services then. I for one am happy for social networks and any other website to have adverts down the side of their page or a banner at the top in exchange for services I use so frequently.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

I am against being tracked. If the advertisements were just relevant to the content of the site I was on, and not based on what the advertising server thinks I am interested based on it tracking my browsing habits, I wouldn't mind them.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[ShanghaiBill]

I am against being tracked.

So what? Just because you are against it does mean it is harmful. I am happy to be tracked, and am happy to reap the benefits of sites and ads that automatically tailor themselves to my wants. You may be happy in your paranoid little cocoon, but I don't see how you are better off in any way.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[_merlin]

I'm working in Hong Kong, and youtube has been bombarding me with ads for finding a foreign husband, which is pretty funny considering I'm a straight married guy.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[stephanruby]

I'm working in Hong Kong, and youtube has been bombarding me with ads for finding a foreign husband, which is pretty funny considering I'm a straight married guy.

Are you sure your wife hasn't been using your computer?

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[marcello_dl]

Your data is their ASSET.
Business exploit assets in whatever possible way.
Your assumption that they will be only be used for targeted ads is naive.
Your naivety has been noted.
As my paranoid convoluted thinking has.
Have a nice day.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd argue that the behavior described can't (without doing serious violence to the details) be usefully dismissed as 'making bad decisions'.

Yes, unfortunately, Kids Today show no more signs of being Valiant Defenders of Privacy than did people yesterday. Outside of a principled-but-largely-ineffective minority, nobody ever has. Unshockingly enough, they've largely succumbed to the nigh-inevitable when it comes to advertisers and analytics creeps watching everything they do.

On the other hand, they do appear to be taking some degree of protective action against authority figures who are overt enough to be obviously worth evading(parents, principles, coaches, etc.) and dumb enough to be evadable(If you plan on using the internet in a remotely ordinary fashion without Google, Lexis-Nexis, your friendly local telco, and possibly a three-letter-agency or two, good luck with that. If you are trying to communicate with your friends without your parents catching on to what exactly you are drinking, that's still possible).

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why is it a bad decision? The more advertisers know about me, the more likely I am to see ads for things I am actually interested in.

I do hope that none of your interests would be worth more to your insurer, potential employer, or other interested parties than they would be to doubleclick...

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[stealth_finger]

Second assumption: Your unwanted 'adverts' won't threaten your life for being pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, anti-republican, anti-military occupation.

Well, that escalated quickly.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Alyeska]

Your data is their ASSET. Business exploit assets in whatever possible way.

Not only business: Political campaigns use the same marketing tactics and sociological research business does.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Joce640k]

I'm working in Hong Kong, and youtube has been bombarding me with ads for finding a foreign husband, which is pretty funny considering I'm a straight married guy.

I live in Spain. You should see the amount of adverts/phone calls I get for English lessons. "Targeted", indeed.

They may be tracking people like never before but business intelligence is still an oxymoron.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

i am also against tracking. and according to my logic, things that im against, should be destroyed along with the human nodes, that reproduce them.
Also, the harm isnt really necessary, the possibility of harm is enough. One cannot misuse/sell to government thugs the data that one doesn't have... =)

tldr - kill all the advertisers. Preferrably ala Robespierre. that'll teach 'em.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Joce640k]

Why is it a bad decision? The more advertisers know about me, the more likely I am to see ads for things I am actually interested in.

If you only use the internet for buying family groceries then that's probably a good thing, yes.

No, scratch that. I'm sure that even you don't want your medical-insurance company to know how many Cheetos you eat...

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Joce640k]

Are you Scott Adams?

You may want to form part of the matrix and let the overlords manage you, not everybody does.

Everybody screws up when they're a teenager, it's all part of the deal.

This is the first generation that will have all their screw-ups stored in a cross-referenced database for future reference. A database that "connected" people will be able to manipulate/edit for their own benefit.

Not being in the database will be even worse - employers are already demanding access to people's Facebook accounts.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Ian A. Shill]

That's not entirely accurate. You seem to be one of two, 'cause your twin brother said the same thing up there (^^^). Or maybe you're so happy to have ads down the side of the page or a banner at the top in exchange for services you use so frequently, that you're repeating yourself.

Just saying.

I guess you're against free services then. I for one am happy for social networks or any website to have ads down the side of the page or a banner at the top in exchange for services I use so frequently.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Razgorov Prikazka]

Define harmful please.
If a store owner sees me lurking around the high end laptops and comes to me to help me (and his income of course) I think that that is not 'harmful'.
If a server is tracking my every move around the web for years on end. Not so nice. Not harmful either, but annoying... yes, certainly.
If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to who knows who, and has a 'privacy' policy of 24 pages in fontsize 5. Mmmmnot harmful in the sense that it will harm my health or quality of life, but back OFF!!
If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to my future boss who wants to inquire my personal habits. This is harmful because it might deprive me of income (and with that food, medical treatments and so on). Yes harmful.

Privacy is not about harmful vs harmless. 25 Shades of harm I would say :-)
A lot of us here remember the time before internet and cell phones. When I wanted to know about herpes I would go to the library and look it up in a book on STD's. No one would ever know (to a certain degree of course). Now this search queries are logged and stored and available to the highest bidder. That is a completely different story!
The teens of today have no clue whatsoever how life would be without the web, social media, cellphones and the integration of all these. They therefore make different choices. Surprised? Not me. They have no 0. No baseline to what is intrusion and what is just fine.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[MacTO]

It depends upon how you look at advertising. I would argue that advertising is meant to shape the tastes of consumers to reflect the interests of businesses. Given that this data is being collected to make advertising more effective, i.e. to make the shaping of our tastes more effective, I do see this as something to worry about.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

I am against free services. If you are not paying for it then you are the product being sold.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[L. J. Beauregard]

What business gathers, government can rifle through. It doesn't even require a warrant, unless the business refuses to cooperate. Which they ain't gonna do. It would put those sweet government contracts at risk.

If business doesn't gather it, government will have to do so for its own damn self. Which burdens their budget and can at least in theory be challenged in court.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[thesandtiger]

You're missing something though - the fact that everyone's indiscretions will be available will mean that indiscretions will matter less. In a world where everyone's got nude pics out there or whatever, nobody will give a fuck because giving a fuck is essentially risking mutually assured destruction, or, if they happen to be someone without easily discoverable dirt, they'll wind up being seen as a busybody asshole for bothering to try to shame someone.

Hell, the way tech is moving, we aren't that far from people being able to trivially find out anything they want, essentially instantly, about anyone they happen to run across with nothing more than a picture and a smartphone/watch/device.

For me, I learned a long time ago that rather than waste my energy fighting a losing (already lost?) battle, I would instead try to learn how to not give much of a fuck if people feel compelled to "violate my privacy" and how to mitigate the damage that could be done by a malicious person who chose to do so. 90% of this learning was becoming confident enough to just shrug and say "what's your point?" when nosy people try to shame me, and the other 10% was doing my best to ensure that the people who matter in my life aren't assholes.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Charliemopps]

Is that what you really think it's about? Let me tell you about a project I was involved in a while back...

There's a website where a customer could go to, to look up information about products. These products are basically services, so you need a contract and such to get them, so after you've perused the website you're going to either need to call, or a salesman is going to have to find out who you are and call you.

There's a vendor out there (Actually many of them) that sells a service where you install some of their software and give them various API access to your site. When someone visits the site, this software logs the session, logs EVERY bit of information about your visit and stores it. Now, keep in mind, they do not know who you are likely. You can create an account on the site and if you do they have your info, but likely they don't. There's a lot of psychological manipulation involved in getting you to log in and reveal who you are, but if you don't, that's ok to. They track your IP, your web browser, where your IP originates from, your OS, the time you spent on the site, everything you looked at, etc... from all of this they give you an ID. When you visit the next time, they know who you are... it's very accurate. I was so amazed by the process I tested it and tried to trick it. Even Tor didn't matter. It used that as a data point to identify me the next time I logged in.

So now you're visitor 12548... but they still don't know who you are. This is where the outside vendor or "partner" comes in. They have thousands of customers. All of which have thousands or tens of thousands of hits per day. So now you go to a different site, fall for their psychological manipulation to create an account... Boom, they have your email address, possibly more if you provided your name and number. But the fact of the matter is, if they have your email address they almost assuredly have the rest of your personal info with just a few simple queries. This is all automatic, it happens very fast, all of that companies customers get relayed the data. Then this data comes in as a "Sales lead" creates a ticket and gets shipped to a salesman who calls you. Not only does the salesman have your name, number and where you work, he knows just about every site you've visited in the past 30 days that's affiliated with the company that does the data mining, and the salesman knows everything about what you've been doing on his website.

Now he's ready to make a sales pitch and probably knows more about your habits that your wife does. Is that ok with you? Think of a financial institution that knows you've been looking for a loan to consolidate your debt... and they know all about your plans to go to Hawaii next month... or prediliction for furry porn? or anything else?

This isn't about serving up targeted adds. If it were, it wouldn't be a problem.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[chihowa]

You're missing something though - the fact that everyone's indiscretions will be available will mean that indiscretions will matter less.

That doesn't really follow, though. What will happen is that we'll have a larger class of people who will never be fit for high level jobs, politics, certain professions because of their actions as teenagers. Kids in the "right" class will be taught not to make these mistakes or their parents will pay to have them properly covered up.

Our society may talk the talk, but it isn't really tolerant of indiscretions, youthful or otherwise. In the same way, charging more and more people with felonies for minor victimless crimes doesn't make people look less harshly on felons; it just makes a larger class of unemployable felons.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Stan92057]

Please explain why the print media had made billions of dollars all without the ability to track its readership? Same for magazines they are loaded with advertisements that interest its readers. Why must advertiser spy on us without permission? And they are advertising stuff that doesn't even remotely mirror the web sites content. As long as they try to spy on what i do say buy without my explicit permission i will block all attempts to do so.

Whew.

[multiben]

I'm so glad that today's social media options didn't exist when I was at school. I shudder to think of the things I would have thought would be fun to post on the internet.

Re:Whew.

[Ghaoth]

But did you carve "Multiben loves Sue" into the old Oak tree that everyone still reads today?

Re:Whew.

[Anonymous Coward]

... everyone still reads today ...

The Oak tree doesn't have his date of birth, or parent's address. Even better, no-one can pick up their phone and see the Oak tree (probably). Really great, is that no-one can search what is written on other Oak trees.

Perspective...

[Alyeska]

Yesterday, I watched an old episode of "The Rockford Files" from 1977 -- a serious two-parter about a private consortium committing various crimes while setting up a secret computer system to track consumers. The episode ended with a black screen and a chilling message from NBC:

"Secret information centers, building dossiers on individuals, exist today. You have no legal right to know abut them, prevent them, or sue for damages. Our liberty may well be the price we pay for permitting this to continue unchecked -- Member, U.S. Privacy Protection Commission."

Re:Perspective...

[auric_dude]

Support https://www.eff.org/

Re:Perspective...

[TapeCutter]

I know the episode your talking about and remember the message. It's probably no coincidence that Nixon split his guts to David Frost in 1977. The FBI under J.E. Hoover had been spying on US citizens for decades, they routinely infiltrated and sabotaged non violent groups such as anti-war protesters, as an example of how absurd it became they had a huge dossier on John Lennon. I'm not an American but I was 17 at the time and watergate was a huge affair, it was clear that the kind of thing that happened at the Watergate hotel was routine, the scandal was followed by some significant legislation on what data government could collect, and under what circumstances domestic groups could be infiltrated. It doesn't seem to have worked, I would not be at all surprised if someone found a similar dossier on the "Dixie Chicks" buried somewhere in Homeland security's basement.

As an Aussie I would like to give Letterman a pat on the back for what he's been doing with his "stooge of the day" segment, regardless of your views on gun control, the point he keeps hammering home is that all the stooges voted in direct opposition to the expressed wishes of an overwhelming majority of their constituents. Every single stooge on Letterman's show is a specific example of an individual politician doing their bit to "steal your liberty". Sure politicians should lead rather than follow the opinion polls, but when they are so out of kilter with them (in some cases taking a position opposed by over 90% of voters), they have some 'splaining to do.

Not really a surprise

[OhANameWhatName]

teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data

And two year olds haven't learnt to balance on their feet yet. At what point of intrusive monitoring of minors do we consider this illegal without parental consent?

Well, you got to consider his ancestors

[Anonymous Coward]

ShanghaiBills grandparents were last seen talking to that nice IBM census taker: "Our religion? Sure, all the better for the government to plan our future".

1939, Germany.

Godwin, kiss my sweaty hairy man ass.

Rule one

[stealth_finger]

Never put anything online you wouldn't want you mum to. Goes doubly so for social networks.

Re:Rule one

[stealth_finger]

Never put anything online you wouldn't want you mum to. Goes doubly so for social networks.

...mum to see.

Ah youth

[Krneki]

Still innocent about how morally hypocrite the adult world is.

I envy them.

There is nothing wrong with sharing personal information if a person desire to do so, what is wrong is the exploitation of them. This is what we should be enraged about.

Judgement

[Waveguide04]

There is a reason my kids dont have FB, Twitter, etc accounts. Until they know what and where to disclose info, not a bright idea to open the flood gates both inbound and outbound. Just sayin.