Cloud Computing isn’t Private
“Cloud computing places your data in the hands of companies that neither care about you or your data.” That isn’t a direct quote but rather, the summary by a writer at TechCrunch of an overall feeling about shared computing data and it’s impact on privacy. If your company is considering cloud computing, you might want to consider this:
1. Will your cloud provider take your side or the government’s if federal agents come knocking and asking for your data?
2. Who is really in control of the security and privacy of your data on the cloud?
3. Can your disaster recovery and business continuity plans provide concrete, predictable results when you have to restore or recover cloud systems? Can you accurately predict the downtime and thus, loss to your company?
read moreWhat the FTC Proposal Means to You, the Consumer
As many of you probably know by now, the first of the two promised government reports on consumer privacy is out. This one, prepared by the FTC, aims its message directly at industry but has its eye set on protecting the consumer’s interests. The other report, due shortly from the commerce department, will most likely be aligned more towards protecting the interests of industry.
The FTC report is 122 pages, mostly filled with details and background. So what did the FTC say? In summary, three things:
- Companies should be more privacy-conscious throughout their operations
- It should be easier for consumers to understand and exercise their privacy rights
- There should be greater transparency in how companies collect, use and make your personal information available.
My Privacy is More Important than Your Privacy
Consumers are spending more and more time protecting their privacy by locking down their social networking access to the outside world. Yet they quite often adopt a “my privacy is more important than your privacy” attitude when they decide to share that embarrassing photograph of you from the office holiday party. Once they share the image to their friends, it falls into the privacy settings of all of those people. And if one of them decides it can go viral, you can end up in the reputation toilet. Here are a few scenarios that actually happened on the web where the victim was completely helpless.
A young girl was chatting with her friends about the upcoming prom. They were trying to arrange a limo to take a group of about 30 kids to the event and were discussing how to pay for it. Our young girl said something along the lines of, “I can pay most of it because my dad just got a new job. He hates his boss but he says it pays better than his last job so I’m sure we can afford it.” One of the kids in the conversation said something to his parents and it turns out they knew someone who worked for the same company as the first young girl’s dad and before long, the first young girl’s dad was being invited into his boss’s office for a chat. What started as a seemingly innocuous comment may have cost her dad his job.
read moreBehavioral Tracking or Voodoo?
The idea that watching which sites you visit allows someone to predict your purchasing behavior is a little like Voodoo. And each different behavioral tracking advertising vendor claims to have cracked the art and found the magic voodoo juju. But have they? I don’t think so.
Many advertisers believe that if they stick a needle in your leg (or set a browser cookie… hey, it’s a metaphor ok?) while you are shopping for a new cookbook, that tells them you want a cookbook and so they’ll nag you and nag you as you surf around the web trying to get you to go back to that site to buy more cookbooks. This is called re-targeting. But re-targeting almost never works. Especially when a particular re-targeter spans a large part of the web and you are hounded for cookbooks on every site you visit, many times with 2 or 3 ads per page. What it usually causes is resentment, not a conciliatory action that results in a purchase.
The Buzz over Buzz is over
I, like many gmail users received the following email today:
Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we’ve reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.
Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.
The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users’ concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.
What Happens in Vegas, Stays on Facebook
When the Las Vegas visitors bureau came up with the catchy phrase, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’, I doubt if they were suggesting that visitors travel to their fair city solely for the purpose of committing adultery. But it does appeal to an inner self in all of us that craves “letting our hair down” and hopefully, keeping those moments private. As comedian/actor Dane Cook says, “It happened. It only happened there. And it happened far enough away to have any negative effect on the ‘the here and now’. And anyone who wasn’t there at the time need not know about it.”
But protecting your privacy regarding what happens in Las Vegas goes only as far as your friend’s video-equipped cellphone can broadcast it. The belief that any public action you take in any city could in any way be private is as absurd as ‘non smoking’ sections within a restaurant. You may not want the smoke to drift your way but someone forgot to tell the smoke that it had to stay on the other side of the room. You may WANT your activities to remain private, but what is embarrassing to you is most assuredly hilarious to a bystander equipped with a high-definition cell phone camera and an always-on internet connection providing a direct pipeline to Facebook and all of his waiting friends.
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