A news story on NRP’s “All Things Considered” this evening, had an interesting subtext. The initial context of the news story highlighted that students at Virginia Tech have been using Facebook and MySpace as a means of communicating with each other and with distant friends. The subtext was how the news media has used this same content for dual purposes – both as news content and as potential news *contacts*.

(I preface the next paragraph by saying I wrote it before I took the time to read Facebook’s terms of use.)

News outlets have used these public Internet sites to harvest background content, quotes, and story lines. To a greater or lesser extent, this is reasonable or reasonably expected. The content in the public domain.

More interesting (and unfortunate) is that media personnel have used the information from Facebook and MySpace to identify potential interviewees for the purpose of securing quotes from students involved as well as friends and family of students effected. In some cases, the media were insistent in their pursuits – to the point of harassment.

I was not familiar with the policies at Facebook so I took a closer look. It turns out, the media’s behavior could be found in violation of the terms of the service.

You further agree not to harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of Users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications.

Source Facebook Terms of Use

To be honest, I was not expecting the above section of the terms of use. I had assumed the user content would be deemed “in the public domain”. It’s refreshing – but the pessimist in me suspects it goes mostly ignored.

What all of this means is that “if it’s in the Internet, it’s considered fair game”. It means those who choose to publish in the Internet, should evaluate all the good and bad ways that information may be used. It is our responsibility to protect ourselves, our family, and our friends.

This is an unfortunate state of affairs. However, it is reality. If someone wants to misuse or subvert a situation, there are too many possible ways for us to prevent them all. Information and privacy are the latest victims.

The more I read blogs and contemplate what I should and should not blog about, I keep coming back to a series of conversations I had with Alex Morrow, and IBM Fellow, on the topic of on privacy and personal data. Those talks were before all of the blogs, the existence of MySpace.com, personal websites, and the like and the issues then are even more relevant today.

Assuming your personal information is stored in a common repository such that the necessary people can get to it quickly, how do you protect the content such that only people who should get to it , can *and* how do you change those settings quickly ?

In the conversations with Alex, the topic was medical information but it applies to al personal information including financial information. Continue reading ‘Privacy Issues with Myspace.com, SecondLife, and other online environments’ »