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Privacy

Privacy is difficult. Our purchases, searches, and actions are recorded to varying degrees. Facebook and networking sites are pushing the boundaries of what we have in the past viewed as privacy. I think a historical view of privacy is a bit of an illusion (Stephen Downes has talked about this in the past from his experience growing up in a small community. My experience is somewhat similar – privacy means very little in small communities. Trust is partly formed by knowing the rather inconsequential details of people in your community). Banks and credit agencies have long been collecting more data than consumers realize. Some boundary pushing services still make me uncomfortable. I’m not interested in lifecasting (video or otherwise). And I’m not too eager to tell my social network what I’ve purchased on my credit cards – i.e. Blippy.

This was written by gsiemens. Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, at 5:33 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

2 Comments

  1. Colleges Online wrote:

    “And I’m not too eager to tell my social network what I’ve purchased on my credit cards – i.e. Blippy.” I just took a look at Blippy and it made me sick. I worry that all those people will get their card numbers stolen. Worst case scenario, I know, but I still wouldn’t want people knowing how much I’m spending each time I used my card.

    Have you ever seen the movie, “sicko”? It talks about how health insurance companies use everything you’ve filled out to try and get out of paying your medical bills. It always makes me wonder how much people can really find out about you online without your knowledge.

    Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 11:51 am | Permalink
  2. Nicola wrote:

    Hi, had a weird thing yesterday – all admin and personal stuff for me still via email such as purchases and at the moment gmail. I was staying overnight somewhere in this building which had about 300 rooms I think and there were also some additional accommodation buildings. I logged into gmail via the on site internet and then left it and went for dinner with the team that I was with. One of them who was staying in the building but at the other end of it said “I’ve just logged into gmail and it says I’m logged in as you” and he could see my inbox – and everything… That was a very quick dinner then flew back and logged out. I don’t know if 2, 10, 100, 1000 people – for all I know the whole web could have been logged into my gmail at that moment, but it did make me stop and think.

    I have stayed there before, I wonder if its happened before too, I will never know.

    I mean being a police related organisation no doubt anyone could find out anything they wished, but still.

    Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 12:55 pm | Permalink