Social Media and Privacy

Social Media and PrivacySarah Mitchell, WITWA

May 2011

http://www.globalcopywriting.com

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What is Privacy? Changes in social norms How data is collected about you What you can do to maintain your privacy

Goal for this morning

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Big Brother meet Mark Zuckerberg

Written in 1949 - pervasive government surveillance

Launched in 2004 - Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Image courtesy of courosa at Flickr.com 4

Australians Online 2009

74.3 % use the Internet

24.4% subscribe to Broadband service

28.7% subscribe to Internet service

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LinkedIn: 2 million users Twitter: 2.5 million users Facebook: 9.5 million users FourSquare: 60,000 in Sydney

Recent Social Media Statistics for Australia

Images by follystone, Jef Aerosol on Flickr.com 6

Paradigm Shift in Social Norms

We Assume:

Conversations are private and only made public when we take action

But Online:

Conversations are public by default and you have to work to make them private

Image courtesy of Portable Gratfiti on Flickr.com 7

“Privacy isn’t about controlling functional access to content as much as knowing what to share when and how it will flow.”

– Danah Boyd, 32nd International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

What is Privacy?

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The Pull of the Social Network

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1. Most social networks have no way to qualify friendships. If they do, they’re ineffective or rarely used.

2. We’re much more relaxed about strangers in an online environment than we are in person.

3. Social networks provide a game-like atmosphere where collecting friends and building big followings is desirable.

The Comfort of Strangers

Alexander Korth, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/on_privacy_in_social_networks_what_drives_users.php

Image courtesy of Miss Karen at Flickr.com 10

• Social Media is designed to encourage people to abandon privacy. We’re MORE reserved in person.

• We connect with people we don’t know and we do it often

• It’s immediate; everyone has devices and networks

Be Aware

Image courtesy of fredcavazza at Flickr.com 11

Your Information is NetworkedSocial Media is considered part of the public domain

Over 60% of recruiters used LinkedIn and Facebook to vet candidates

Journalists scour Facebook whenever they need a photo

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It’s not Big Brother you should be worrying about -

It’s your family, friends, and colleagues

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You’re being exposed in new ways

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In many different forums

Image courtesy of Twodogz photography at Flicker.com

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There is no privacy!“It’s highly likely that if you have had a public profile or website that has publicly accessible data, it’s been indexed and identified by someone.” tribalytic.com

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“We don’t have developed laws of individual privacy

in Australia.” – Michael Lishman, Partner at Clifford Chance, 24 May

2011, AICD Emerging Director Briefing: Risk and Reputation Management

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What on earth is WOEID?

Image courtesy of projectarchive.net 18

Where on Earth ID (WOEID) describes your location in a more friendly way than longitude/latitude coordinates

WOEID

Image courtesy of Scott McLead at Flickr.com 19

How is WOEID determined?

GPS coordinates from your mobile phone, computer, car or any other GPS device

Geo tags derived from user profiles like www.trendsmap.com

Your time zone

Image courtesy of Smart Stylist on Flickr.com 20

Placemaker from Yahoo – Free geoparsing Web service for feeds, web pages, news, status updates

Language identifier

Text Mining – What you’re talking about in your social media activity

How is WOEID determined?

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How is WOEID determined?

FourSquare and other social media tools using that auto posting feature

Network theory – You probably live where your network is located

Publically available APIs for nearly every social media site including Facebook and Twitter

Facebook’s ‘Social Graph’ API

{ "name": "Facebook Platform", "type": "page", "website": "http://developers.facebook.com", "username": "platform", "founded": "May 2007", "company_overview": "Facebook Platform enables anyone to build...", "mission": "To make the web moe open and social.", "products": "Facebook Application Programming Interface (API)...", "fan_count": 449921, "id": 19292868552, "category": "Technology“ }

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How is WOEID determined?

Your extended social network: Blog Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MySpace

Paid services (online detective agencies)

Image courtesy of Leonid Mamchenkov on Flickr.com

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• Your data lives into perpetuity

• You don’t own the data once it’s posted onto the web

• Privacy policies change all the time

Social Media is here to stay BUT:

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How is WOEID used?

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Recommendations

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Behave as if the world is paying attention – it is

Turn off GEO tracking on your electronic devices (don’t forget your car)

Remove or deactivate social networking accounts you no longer use

Refrain from using auto posting features Refrain from using cross channel integration Become familiar with privacy settings

How to Stem Privacy Erosion

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Don’t post personal photos of anyone Never mention the names of my family Do not discuss where I’m going or advertise

when I’m going to be away from home Don’t reveal my birthdate

My Personal Rules

Image courtesy of Jorge Quinteros at Flickr.com 28

Understanding the flow of data and the integration between social networking channels is key to protecting your privacy.

Social Media is NOT private

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Privacy Commissioners website (Australia)www.privacy.gov.au

Privacy Rights website (USA) www.privacyrights.org

Timothy Lisko (USA), @PrivacyWonkwww.privacywonk.net

Vivenne Storey (Australia), @mysocialpolicyhttp://mysocialmedialawyer.wordpress.com/

Good Resources

Questions?

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