This week has been marked by some very big news stories about social media and the privacy issues related to the ever-increasing amounts of information available about each of us that is posted online through social media. As Facebook announced that it reached 500 million customers – yes, that’s right, half a billion people around the world, making Facebook larger than every country in the world except two – it’s clear that social media is no longer a phenomenon but a way of life for many people. The new normal — like having a cell phone, 500 television channels and wi-fi access everywhere.
This continual and constant documenting and sharing of our own lives as well as our network – of friends, both real and “Facebook” friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances – has ramifications we’re only just beginning to fathom and raises some thorny questions.
This past Sunday, the New York Times magazine had an insightful look at how the new social web means the end of forgetting. If so much data about us is potentially available to anyone – and we have no control over what is published about us through being tagged in photos, a negative comment posted about us online, etc. – how do we navigate a world where the Internet records everything and provides a permanent, lasting digital memory that cannot be erased? What if the Google results that come up for you paint a picture of you that you’d rather not show? Or worse one that is just plain wrong or that contains personal information you want to keep private?
Another question that we are just beginning to grapple with: what information is being shared without our full knowledge? In fact, as this great Wordstream infographic below demonstrates so elegantly, a lot more than we probably realize.
Wow! That’s a lot of information, right?
Which of course raises the next question: what is the potential harm in all this information being shared? Well, not being criminals, most of us can’t even begin to imagine how our information can be used for nefarious purposes. However, you need only read a few examples that were in the news this week to understand that while we are using social media for entertainment and amusement, for criminals it is the new millennium version of a gold rush.
The New York Times ran a story about how The International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), a non-profit research organization in Berkeley, CA will be releasing findings that show how cybercriminals are able to use geo-tagged text, photos and videos to cause serious harm. Most smartphones today utilize geo-location tools that collect vast amounts of data and most consumers aren’t aware of how this information is being shared. To prove their point, the researchers were able to obtain the home address for a person selling items on Craigslist by using the geo-tagging on the photos posted in the Craigslist classified ad and comparing them against Google Street View.
In testimony before the House of Representatives this week, Assistant Director Gordon Snow of the FBI talked about some of the cybercrimes the FBI is seeing. Reading this, one realizes how sophisticated and large-scale these criminal enterprises are and how vulnerable we are by virtue of being so connected and so visible online. In one particularly chilling example, he recounts how criminals, working as part of large-scale data mining schemes, send out “getting to know you” quizzes on social media with questions that seem innocuous but that actually mimic the questions asked by financial institutions to retrieve your password when you’ve forgotten it, like the name of your first pet, your first car and so on. Once they have this info, they match it up with your email address and now they have the keys to your kingdom – bank accounts, credit cards, etc.
Mind-blowing right?
Here in our business of identity theft resolution, we witness everyday the impact of how the loss of one’s personal information can cause distress and damage – both personal, financial and emotional. All these stories have a common theme that will likely continue to be a familiar refrain in the coming months and years – the new frontier of the Internet is about privacy and control of your information. How much privacy do you have? Does privacy even exist in today’s Internet as this article so pointedly asked? Who controls your information? And how are they using it?
Or maybe Mitch Joel in his Six Pixels of Separation blog has it right that the next big thing online just might well be anonymity.
What do you think? Does social media mean the death of privacy? Should we change our online habits because of criminal activity around social media?
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