Privacy and Fear

I actually find the subject of privacy and the academic side of it dull, but what I do find interesting is how people perceive privacy risks and how that is inaccurate.

For example when Facebook feeds came out there was a huge uproar about privacy infringement even though no additional private information was being given out. Also I have heard several people say that they find Gmail is invading there privacy by "reading" there emails and showing them contextual ads.

I just finished reading Freakonomics while on holiday and it too talks about how people are not very good at assigning risk. I lent that book to someone and I don't think there was a good summary of the point but it said that the dread at the thought of something increases our fear far more than the risk factor. The example given is the difference between deaths caused by swimming pools and guns and how people fear guns disproportionately to the risk associated to them. This applies to a lot of things.

Fear over privacy I think is even more complicated because in a lot of interactions on social websites you are deliberately giving out your information but at the same time you want the perception of privacy. Here are 2 interesting points:

• Facebook is successful because its private
• Myspace is successful because it lacks privacy

Its easy to argue both points. I mean Myspace lacks privacy in the sense that it is a place where a lot of people give out a lot of private information publicly and it enables that to happen. Facebook stresses privacy between friends and gives a lot of controls which has lead it to gain popularity but at the same time people who spend a lot of time on Facebook are going through a lot of private information on people that they wouldn't normally have access to.

The difference between having information available and having it displayed in a different format is big. For example all you have to do is signup to Facebook and you have access to every single members profile picture, you basically know what 10 million (50 now?) look like, thats a pretty big privacy issues, but no one really cares, but when something like peopleradar.com comes along and lets people rate these pictures, then it suddenly becomes a privacy concern.

Lets say next time someone changed there Facebook status from dating to single lets say all there friends received an automated text or even better a call letting them know about the breakup. The automated text messaging is not far from happening, maybe its already been implemented.

I haven't truly figured out everything on privacy, those are just some of my musings and I don't really have a conclusion. I feel like there is probably a way to fully rationalise it, but I am not there yet.

I will leave you with this interesting privacy flaw in Facebook, if you search in Events and Groups for "lost phone" or " new number" or something like that you will find literally hundreds of peoples personal numbers, not just the people that lost their number but also all the peoples comments on that event/groups walls give out more numbers. It is not really Facebook's flaw but a misunderstanding among users, but perhaps all of them realise what they were doing and didn't mind their numbers being available.