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Is it time to start worrying about what details we’re storing on social networking sites? If the relaxed attitude to privacy taken by Facebook and Google is anything to go by, we certainly should be.
Back in December it was Facebook feeling the brunt of a backlash after it ‘updated’ its settings and released information users thought was supposed to be private. This came after it had already faced lawsuits, a media frenzy and public outcry over its controversial Beacon contextual ad system. Trust in Facebook is already beginning to wane.
So have any lessons been learnt about looking after people’s information? It would appear not…
People prefer to pick their own friends
If you haven’t heard – last week Google bolted on ‘Buzz’, a social networking feature, to Gmail. In a rather clumsy approach to data mining, Google pulled information on who its users had been emailing and chatting with to automatically generate lists of Buzz ‘friends’.
Predictably the wheels fell off because Google had failed to see the harm in making these lists public. This meant, for example, if you’d been emailing an ex-girlfriend or chatting to someone you shouldn’t this was immediately made public for all to see.
There’s already one story doing the rounds of a woman’s abusive ex-husband being able to follow her after Google added him to her newly created friends list.
Google’s ‘confusion’ over people’s privacy
The lack of thought and testing that went into Google Buzz suggests a rather relaxed attitude to people’s personal information.
People are already getting fed up of playing cat and mouse with Facebook over their privacy settings. So as more incidents like this occur you could see people starting to abandon social networking altogether if they don’t think their personal content is safe.
One example of the dangers of social networking is PleaseRobMe.com – a website which claims to reveal when people aren’t at home by publishing the Twitter feeds of people playing Foursquare (an online game based on people’s location). It highlights how people are only too happy to publicly share details about themselves they’d have kept private only a few years ago.
It’s not just brands that should be worried about ‘transparency’
You hear a lot about how the internet is bringing in a new era of transparency and authenticity in marketing, where businesses are forced to reveal themselves, warts and all, because social networking is making it impossible to gloss over their misdemeanours.
Well, it would appear that it’s not just the marketing departments of big brands that should be worried. Social networking is making more of our private lives more public, whether we want it or not.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
