“Pygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups worldwide whose average height is unusually low; anthropologist define pygmy as any group whose adult males grow to less than 150 cm in average height. The best known pygmies are the Aka, Efé and Mbuti of central Africa. There are also pygmies in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Brazil.”
This is the definition of Pygmy that you can find on the Encyclopedia Britannica. Why do I start my blog about privacy with such a weird definition? Because I wanted to give an example of the few remaining groups of people that can affirm to have privacy. For the rest of us, the word “privacy” has little real meaning if anything at all. Simply put, today privacy does not exist anymore.
A couple of days ago I was logging off my Facebook account but a window popped up preventing me to close the page. Facebook wanted to know if I was willing to link my account to the pages of Michael Crichton, Ellis Peters and Ken Follet. Ok, you would think, what is wrong with that? They are my favourite writers, Facebook just wanted to be sure that I got the most updated news about them. You are right if it were not for a little quibble: I never wrote on my Facebook account that they were my favourite writers and even if Facebook could guess about Crichton and Follet ( they are quite popular after all ) it could not have done so about Ellis Peters ( who read about “Brother Cadfael” ?! ). How was it possible for Facebook to know about it?
I have a possible explanation for Crichton and Peters ( but not for Follet ) but this explanation worsen the problem of the privacy more than solve it. I used to buy books by Peters and Crichton on Amazon and, notwithstanding all the privacy that Amazon would grant me, somehow my tastes and preferences fled to Facebook that is so worried about my wellbeing to suggest me to link my account to my favourite writers'.
Of course, I am not in the best position to speak about privacy since my being on Facebook clearly states that I do not want privacy. But the funny thing is that among all Facebook users, a great deal of them complain about their privacy being damaged by a not adequate privacy policy. Why funny?
Because the naggers are those who upload pictures, personal data, information about their education, their addresses, they also bother to tell the Facebook community that a relative or a friend of theirs is dead! Expectations of privacy, and posting information to the internet - seems a dubious combination!
I admit that there is a trade-off between privacy and security. Generally speaking, higher and tighter the privacy, lower the security being more difficult to get sufficient information that could lead to this or that culprit. What I want to stress is that, today, the need of regulation is higher than ever in order to reach a Pareto optimality in which further improvements in the privacy policy will not be to the detriment of security.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37314726/ns/technology_and_science-washington_post/
http://www.asylum.com/2010/05/25/considering-dumping-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-over-privacy-concerns/http://www.scmagazineus.com/privacy-and-security-concerns-aside-youre-ok-in-my-book-facebook/article/170195/
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Zuckerberg introduced a master control that permits users to choose what information they want to share and with whom. However, he has to fix the privacy issue faster because many users started to leave Facebook which is not good for the corporation. As we know Facebook was sharing data with advertising companies that could tell them who clicked on ads. By removing this data sharing Facebook will lose a lot of money which they do not like. I am glad I do not have an account with Facebook. We should spend our time with our family and friends face to face which teach our kids about socialization.
RispondiEliminaeven if Facebook introduces new controls, i still believe that showing the picture of the profile, the name, and city where a person lives (which are the basic information and i dont believe would be omitted) still gives a lot of information about the person. Facebook now is a part of people's everyday, we see people checking their FB on their mobile, on their computer during work, class , or wherever.. it is an addiction, and as daniele said , if a person is really concerned about his/her privacy, and information , this person would simply chose to not to be on social network.
RispondiElimina