Data Privacy and the Internet

In today’s connected, Internet world there are a lot of discussions and debates going on about data privacy and social application data portability.

For you non-techies out there, their is a big, huge, no giganticenormous push by every third software team to create the next big social application like Myspace. You see, it seems that having a great web site dedicated to helping people communicate and share their disconnected lives into one big virtually connected community can earn one great fortune and fame these days.

But with all this new technology that will connect us all and I mean all of us around the world, there comes a new price — loss of privacy.

Everyone has a different threshold as to how much of their personal information they want to share — information like your email, phone number, address, pictures, music, likes, dislikes and even thoughts among other things.

For most people this information is personal and private and for most people they would like to be able to control who gets to keep this information and who gets to copy this information and take it to other places on the Internet.

Like the ‘49ers of the eighteenth century, for the social applications creators “there’s gold in that there data!” The information each user contributes to the social site binds them together with other users. The more users a social application has, the more web hits the site gets, and with high web traffic the site can sell advertising and with that advertising money just pours in like sunlight at the Mohave desert.

The big debate is who owns the user’s data and to what extent should a social application restrict other applications from copying user’s personal data.

For example when you join Facebook and give the Facebook application some of your personal information such as your name, email address and say cell phone number and then you “Friend” someone by accepting them as your Facebook friend what rights have you actually given them? Can they copy your email address and cell phone number and copy that data to another social application? If they can do that, can they share that information with someone you don’t know and who you didn’t want to have your personal information.

To me it all seems that these questions need to be thoughtfully considered by all social application users. These questions need to be thoughtfully considered by all social application creators.

For me there is a simple way to think about the problem right now:

1. Every social application user must realize that when they share their name, email, phone number or other personal information they have just lost control of that information.
2. Not every social application can ensure and protect that the data they maintain will be secured since by the nature of software, for every security feature devised there are smart application developers who will find work-arounds for the security feature.
3. Social applications do not have the obligation to make their user’s data portable to other social applications. Co-opertition may be a good utopian idea, but until we live in a Star Trek economy food and the necessities of life are purchased with money, gold nuggets not accepted, thank you!
4. Society will at some time have to come to grips with the issues around the ownership of personal data – all personal data that can be used to identify a specific person. As this issue is complex and technical it will take a group of thought leaders who can work through the issues, both technical and human based, to develop a set of parameters that we all can work within.

“Data Utopia” is not here today. Every social application user must use their own judgement when giving their personal information out to web sites on the Internet.

I learned about ten years ago that giving my work email to web sites on the Internet resulted in the release of that email to the wild and a deluge of email spam. Fortunately, anti-spam technology caught up and I don’t get but one or two spams a week now.

Although I firmly believe I own that email, in the virtual world of the Internet once I shared it I  lost control of it.

We need smart, thoughtful people to work on these data ownership and portability issues. Until there are good solutions I’ll be the keeper of my data and I’ll be careful as to what I share. I suggest that you do the same.