Privacy. Is it Really?
Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.
Earlier I had talked about how the Internet and our privacy is seemingly going out like yesterdays newspaper. Facebook and several other companies are planning on sharing your information. Now the claims are to help you so you don’t have to enter the same information to different sites every time you go to them. However, if one person gets a hold of your password… he/she could have almost anything about you and access to almost anything you can access.
In fact today, I recieved a text message from a company that I never have ever purchased something from advertising web goods. I was furious… what gives them the right to use my text messages to sell me things. I pay per use of each text message and they send me messages without my consent? When I got a hold of them I asked where they got my information. The woman named Aileen said.
“Sir I understand your concern. We acquire information from other merchants, of which I can not disclose to you at this time. We simply wish to offer you a greater selection of goods you might be interested in. All information remains confidential.”
Is it just me or is this contradictory…. your information remains confidential but we got your information from outside sources… meaning that it is obviously not confidential. This is infuriating, would you like to have a toilet bowl cleaner company contact you because you bought toilet paper? Most likely not. We need to be careful about making all of societies information completely global… expansion to fast leads to problem… mass expansion leads to big problems.
