Privacy & EthicsFebruary 5, 2013

Today’s Privacy in Social Media

Everything you do online is public by default, private through effort

There’s no such thing as “delete” anymore – everything lives online forever

We now have to think about the consequences of our actions in a whole new way

Did You Know? The primary business model for most

successful online corporations is the mass collection and monetization of your personal data?

All of the major social networks’ default settings are usually public?

75 percent of U.S. recruiters and HR people are required to do online research about candidates and employees? 70 percent say they’ve rejected candidates

because of what they found online

Did You Know?

The Library of Congress is acquiring - and permanently storing - the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006

Governments all over the world are currently considering legislation protecting people’s online privacy

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is discussing providing Web surfers with a “Do Not Track” option DoNotTrack.us

Did You Know?By engaging in simple acts such as IMing

and Facebooking, online companies can find out: Who you are What city you live in Who your friends are What you’re doing on Sunday Your psychological profile Your sexual orientation

Privacy Examples A 16 year-old girl in England

was fired from her office job for complaining on Facebook, “I’m so totally bored!”

A 66 year-old Canadian psychotherapist was denied permanent entry to the U.S. after an Internet search found his 30-year old philosophy journal article on L.S.D. experiments

Privacy Examples A Google employee was

fired for illegally accessing data in several teenagers’ accounts

A weak password-reset security question allowed someone to hack a Twitter employee’s email account and use it to access a Google Docs account that contained sensitive corporate information

Privacy-Related Sites

ReputationDefender – helps you clean up your unfairly-tarnished online reputation

Spokeo – scrubs the Web to publish data about you such as your income, political views and address

Honestly.com – a reputation “marketplace” where people can write anonymous reviews about anyone – rating people as good employees, bosses or co-workers

Disconnect.me

Privacy’s Impact

“Social technologies are forcing us to merge identities that used to be separate – we can no longer have segmented selves like a “home” or “family” self, a “friend” self, a “work” self.”

- Samuel Gosling, U. of Texas

Privacy’s Impact

“In the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives. Using profiles of it customers and tracking their locations through their smart phones, it will be able to provide live updates on their surroundings and inform them of tasks they need to do…Google would know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are - it could remind users what groceries they needed to buy when passing a shop.”

- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, August 2010

Privacy’s Impact

“The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew.”

- New York Times, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” July 2010

Ethical Considerations

“Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious but has become a trade.”

– Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren (article on privacy written in 1890 in response

to the Kodak camera and tabloid press)

Ethical Considerations

Now that everything you do can be made public online, how will you behave?

How will you treat others?

Is the “Golden Rule” enough?

What are the new rules of engagement?

Ethical Considerations“Today we have quick fire and semi or completely anonymous attacks on people, brands, businesses and just about everything else. That picture of you making out with two guys in college up on Facebook. Or perhaps doing a bong hit after winning a few Olympic gold medals. The random slam against your restaurant anonymously left by the owner of the competitor around the corner. The Twitter flame about how bad a driver you are, complete with a link to a picture of your license plate.”

- Michael Arrington, TechCrunch (March 2010)

Parting Thoughts

“We need to learn new forms of empathy, new ways of defining ourselves without reference to what others say about us and new ways of forgiving one another for the digital trails that will follow us forever.”

-New York Times, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” July 2010