Two Posts on the Subject of Facebook and Privacy

I realize it has been a while since I posted here, but I wanted to note these two privacy-related posts because they are different aspects of the same problem.

Mark Zuckerberg Faces the Privacy Meter: Facebook trends open book

Face it folks, it’s time to dust off the Privacy Meter for a quick check of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to an internal source, Mr. Zuckerberg has placed himself in the camp made (in)famous in 1999 by Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who was reported to have said: “You already have zero privacy anyway, so get over it.” Mr. Zuckerberg’s position was recently described by a Facebook insider in response to this question: “How does Zuck feel about privacy?” Response: “He doesn’t believe in it.” (More...)

Facebook Tool Might Help With Privacy Settings and Awareness

Using Facebook means sharing personal information with at least some people, but Facebook sometimes makes changes to the way sharing works. Knowing exactly what you share and with whom can be hard to figure out. (More...)

Disclaimer: Okay, so I have severely neglected this blog. Bad blogger! No Bloggie Award! Frankly, I blame that age-old pair of challenges: Too many blogs and not enough time. I have been blogging, just not here. And some of my posts in other places have been privacy-related. I admit, I'm still trying to resolve the many-niche-blogs versus unified-blogging theory. Please bear with me.

Are People Quitting Google in Droves? Time will tell

After pondering aloud in my last post about consumer attitudes to Google I did a little digging and found this on the "browser blog" at Fortune.com:

Google corners nearly two-thirds of US search market

The latest search market share numbers are in from Hitwise: in the four weeks ended March 31st, Google (GOOG) racked up fully 64.13% of all US searches. That’s up more than 10% since March 2006, and, if trends hold, Google’s share will pass the two thirds mark by August. In the same period, Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), and Ask (IACI) all lost share. As the old Wall Street hands like to say: “Liquidity begets liquidity.”

Clearly, this is not good news for the search also rans, particularly as it covers a period when all of them made major and costly improvements to their search engines. Ask.com for example, rolled out an impressive local search service in 2006 and also greatly improved its image searching, and yet its share declined nearly a half a point, to a fragile 3.48%, in the course of the year.

Conventional wisdom has long held that Google is vulnerable to vertical attacks, i.e. search engines that carve out category niches. The new Hitwise data suggests, however, that Google is actually gaining influence in valuable verticals...

That post was dated April 11 and Google was at 64.8% by June according to the blog at Hitwise, readable here. I will keep watching these two sites to see if there is any evidence of a prviacy-fear induced slowdown in Google growth. If Google does not pass the 2/3 mark by August, look for Privacy International to claim some credit.
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Google Brain Implants: Not yet, likely never

You have to love the opening of this recent article about Google, sourced from Reuters, but written up by New Zealand TV:

Most people missed the announcement about how Google Inc. wants to burrow inside your brain and capture your most intimate thoughts. That's because it never happened. But Google, the world leader in web search services, is the focus of mounting paranoia over the scope of its powers as it expands into new advertising formats from online video to radio and TV, while creating dozens of new internet services.

Interestingly the article -- available online here -- quotes two people at Google who work on privacy. A lot of the recent Google/privacy stories, sparked by the Privacy International press release about its interim report, give the impression that nobody at Google bothers with privacy. The NZ story quotes Nicole Wong, "the Google attorney who oversees a team of lawyers who consider privacy and other policy issues that go into the making of each product," and Peter Fleischer, "Google's global privacy counsel."

So it sounds like Google has a lawyer devoted to privacy and another attorney leading a product review team that has privacy as part of its remit. This is clearly not enough for some privacy advocates and so, if I was Google I would very publicly create a job entitled Chief Privacy Officer and then hire someone with a good industry reputation for the post. That might allay the fears of privacy advocates. In the meantime I am keeping a watch out for any surveys that indicate consumers have any privacy fears that are keeping them away from Google.
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The Actual Interim Privacy Rankings: Is Google really hostile and aggressive?

With so much chatter about the "Google Sucks at Privacy" story put out by Privacy International, I thought it would be useful to provide a link to their source document: interimrankings.pdf . Here's a quote:

We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations.

I have to say that the use of the word "hostilities" in this context is surprising. I've been involved in some pretty serious privacy and security cases and nobody was accused of hostility in their approach to privacy. For example, I was involved when the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against Eli Lilly for violating privacy. I helped Microsoft comply with certain requirements imposed by the FTC to settle charges arising from security and privacy issues. But hostilities? Here's more:

While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy [my emphasis]. This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google's product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google's market dominance and the sheer size of its user base. Google's status in the ranking is also due to its aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies and techniques.

If Google is guilty of "aggressive use of invasive technologies and techniques" where are the regulators and politicians and consumer outrage? Surely Google hasn't bribed them all.

Google's increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user's life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook. Neither of these elements has been demonstrated. Rather, we have witnessed an attitude to privacy within Google that at its most blatant is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent. These dynamics do not pervade other major players such as Microsoft or eBay, both of which have made notable improvements to the corporate ethos on privacy issues.

I feel compelled to add a phrase to that last sentence: "after consumer outcry." Microsoft was dragged before the FTC and eBay was heckled by members. I'm not aware of widespread consumer outcry over Google. So, I suggest you read the above-referenced "interim" document and decide for yourself. Note that the report was compiled

...using data derived from public sources (newspaper articles, blog entries, submissions to government inquiries, privacy policies etc), information provided by present and former company staff, technical analysis and interviews with company representatives.

and

Because the 2007 rankings are a precedent, Privacy International will regard the current report as a consultation report and will establish a broad outreach for two months to ensure that any new and relevant information is taken into account before publishing a full report in September.

Does Privacy International make its case or is it really just trying to force Google into a dialogue by holding out the hopes of a less critical final report?
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Privacy Watchdog Tags Google Worst on Web

As you have probably noticed, a UK-based group called Privacy International has ranked Google dead last among a dozen major Internet-based companies in terms of protecting users' privacy: Privacy Watchdog Tags Google Worst on Web.

The sheer size of Google, coupled with the company's ability to share user data between its various subsidiaries, led Privacy International to bestow the [dubious] distinction on the Net's biggest search engine.

This rank ranking might also have had a tiny bit to do with the fact that Privacy International seems to have a really bad relationship with Google. PI is the same organization that put out a press release in 2004 headed "Privacy watchdog vows to bring Gmail to heel." Perhaps not surprising then that PI has not been able to have much of a conversation with Google (which it sued in 16 countries). When PI asserts that Google has an “entrenched hostility to privacy,” one wonders if PI doesn't have an entrenched hostility to Google.

I doubt PI have won any friends within Google with this headline-grabbing "worst of the worst" verdict. Yet one does wonder what exactly Google thinks about privacy. You can get some fascinating insight over at Ray Everett-Church's Privacy Clue.

And I doubt that consumers in general will be avoiding Google in droves because of what PI says. After all, as stated in my last post, consumers are more concerned about “environmental issues, followed by pension and other retirement benefits, and health care.”

Is the Web Built on a Lack of Privacy?

There are some interesting observations in this TimesOnline article triggered by a BlueCross privacy breach: The web is built on a lack of privacy. The writer is Jonathan Weber, the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. As co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard, Mr. Weber is no stranger to the vagaries of the digital age. I'm sure many of us share his righteous indignation:

A few weeks ago I got a letter from Empire Blue Cross, my one-time health insurer, explaining that there had been an unfortunate incident regarding my personal information (and that of my wife and children too, as it turned out). The letter explained at some length how the company had rigorous policies to insure the confidentiality of patient information, requiring that such information be encrypted and so forth. But the company didn't take the trouble to ensure that it's high-minded – and legally required – policy was actually being implemented, and a CD containing unencrypted personal information on many people, including me, had gone missing.

(To digress from privacy for a moment, this letter sounds like it was written by the same BlueCross hack that penned a recent letter to my wife and I informing us that, as a result of cost savings, increased efficiency, and improvements in health care, our monthly premium was being increased by 20%.)

Weber goes on to muse about the potentials for abuse now that so much data about us is stored somewhere out there, by somebody over whom we have scant control (often somebodies who themselves have less than complete control). Yet at the same time, it is our willingness to share information about ourselves that has enable many features of the web, not least of which is the amazing amount of valuable content that is dished up for free (where 'free' equals 'in return for knowledge about the person accessing the infrormation').


The extent to which people accept, or feel comfortable with, this state of affairs varies greatly, as you might expect (particularly if you have listened to my podcast on The Privacy Meter--plug, shameless plug). This is reflected in the comments on the article which display a range of privacy attitudes. They include the infamous quote from Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems: "You have no privacy. Get over it." (Note: This quote is almost always used out of context but has become a handy verbal marker, serving as everything from a rallying cry or portent of end times, depending upon the quoter's point of view).

The fact is, this stuff is complicated. Some people are more 'open' about their lives than others but you can be very 'open' and still object to careless handling of your data. On the other hand, some people who like their right to privacy have a tendency to confuse it with a right to anonymity, which gets even less of a mention in the Constitution and Bill of Rights than privacy.

There is also a non-trivial socio-economic element to choices about personal privacy. Some people can afford to let the world know all about them without fear of the economic consequences. As someone well-established in his profession, I don't see that much harm would come to me from announcing to the world that I am gay (I am not) but other people fear, sometimes with very real justification, that they will be discriminated against if some of their private choices are made public. The U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy towards homosexuality would seem to be a case in point. (During the first 1o years of this policy some 10,000 members of the armed forces were discharged for being homosexual--suggesting that the policy's intent, respect for the privacy of military personnel, was somehow not met).

The whole area of medical privacy, which is where this post started, is a massively complex can of worms. Suppose I present myself to my doctor with a huge bruise on my leg. If the 'fact' that this bruise was caused by me skydiving (it was not) gets into 'the system,' then the cost of various insurance policies involving me could go even higher (yes, there is a data bank somewhere that stores information on your lifestyle and yes, insurance companies do consult it). In other words, if you're Bruce Willis and command $20 million per movie, you can do and say just about anything you like and not care who knows it. The rest of the world needs, for economic reasons, to be, to varying degrees, more circumspect.

Mixed Privacy Messages May Point to Future Trends

Numerous studies have shown that many people will hand over sensitive data about themselves in return for relatively minor benefits (an ice cream cone in one case I recall). This tendency has perplexed many privacy professionals and social commentators, myself included, as it seems to run counter to expressed fears about privacy (remember that privacy fears topped the chart of "what worries you most about the new century" in a large-scale 1999 survey, beating terrorism).

One way to resolve the apparent dilemma is to declare these studies flawed, suggesting they somehow fail to reflect people's underlying attitudes to privacy. But I can't accept that explanation. The empirical evidence of a strong "exhibitionist" streak in modern society is just too strong and you must account for it in an theory about privacy. Now I see that some people are making progress along these lines. Check out Douglas Rushkoff's perceptive piece in a recent issue of Discover magazine.

"It's as if we humans are not simply wiring up a communications infrastructure but creating a shared platform for self-awareness as a collective organism. And this goal--this almost instinctive push toward gaining access to one another--far outweighs our concern over how this data might be used."

This meshes quite nicely with my view of how humans are evolving. And it also jives with ideas I advanced in one of my first columns on privacy, back in 1994, which I will post here as soon as I can find the darned thing (Google probably has it somewhere).

Here Begins Privacy Think

A blog about privacy, with a focus on the far horizon. Asking questions like:

• Where is privacy headed?
• If people fear Big Brother why do they reveal all on MySpace?
• Could a loss of privacy ever be a good thing?
• What's the difference between privacy and anonymity?
• What does the exposure of hundreds of millions of personal records mean?

Interested? Stay tuned. Get the feed.

Stephen