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privacy

Privacy, social networks, and our online selves

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Two interesting discussions of personal privacy and online social networks. First, this article about the permanence of online information and its implications for an individual’s reputation: “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” by Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Magazine. We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, […]

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Six degrees of separation and your privacy settings

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Related to my post yesterday about Facebook’s privacy settings: danah boyd posted in more detail about the implications of Facebooks privacy (“Facebook and ‘radical transparency’“). These two paragraphs convey the problem I often see in which people haven’t thought through the implications of the “network” part of social networks: A while back, I was talking […]

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How to simplify your privacy on Facebook (and everywhere else on the web)

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Yesterday the New York Times made a noble attempt to map Facebook’s new, super-complicated privacy settings, via a few well-designed graphics and an accompanying article (“The Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking,” by Nick Bilton, 5/12/2010). The new opt-out settings certainly are complex. Facebook users who hope to make their personal information private should be […]

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“Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity” by danah boyd

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For an excellent overview of the concepts and issues surrounding online privacy and publicity, check out danah boyd’s keynote speech from SXSWi for 2010. Just because a large percentage of people engage in public does not mean that they don’t care about privacy. Pew found that 85% of adults want to control who has access […]

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Google’s new interest-based advertising: what it means for consumers

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Google is adding a new kind of advertising to its ad network: Interest-Based Advertising, also sometimes known as “behavioral targeting.” Other companies like Yahoo and AOL already offer similar systems. Google says that advertisers have been requesting interest-based ads for some time, and that this system allows advertisers to more effectively target people who want […]

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