I ran across a good article by Steve Kerrison about how social networking sites over-zealous bloggers are contributing to the erosion of privacy.
Steve warns his readers that anything posted will likely be accessible far into the future. So, while people may want to post opinions and escapades for their online ‘friends,’ they need to be aware that potential employers will also have access to this information.
I’ve also been thinking about this quite a bit. The more personal information shared via these sites, the easier it will be for 3rd parties to begin to use this information to develop robust profiles. I wonder how long it will be before large data mining companies (i.e. Experian, Acxiom) begin trolling social networking sites in search of further information which can be aggregated with the credit, employment, and legal histories that they already have. These companies are already using demographic information, purchasing patterns, and survey results to develop comprehensive attitudinal profiles (i.e. Experian’s TrueTouch service) intended to pull our individual psychological levers.
And while it might sound ok to be able to edit and remove information from those sites (or any site really), what if some company archived all that content and information on a monthly basis? That embarassing spring break fling posted by one of your friends for only 3 weeks may end up getting captured and stored away in some data warehouse for decades and longer…just waiting for when you opt to run for a political position.
LonerVamp
December 27th, 2006
Exactly. Sites such as Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php) are a prime example.
Perry Carpenter
December 27th, 2006