Why bother about our privacy on social networks?

It was an inspiring roundtable of speakers and some good discussions at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law & Information Technology (ICRI) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven this past Thursday where I gave a guest lecture on my expert research. One arguement that I took away for my work and I have to mention here in my blog is the work of Franck Dumontier, researcher at the Centre de Recherches Informatique et Droit (CRID). Thinking of the questions that I always face when talking about the risks for our information privacy in social networks argueing that users give their personal information willingly and, therefore, we should not bother at all. Franck Dumontier brought it to the point: It is the risk of de-contextualization of our personal information we should be concerned about. Social network users want their information to be displayed openly and are willing to share it with a large group of people publicly. However, it is when this information is used out of context that the privacy issues start. Dumontier sees the risk of de-contextualization especially in online social networks because of the simplification of social relations on these sites, the large information dissemination implied by online social networks, and because of the network globalization and normalization effects of social network applications. Think of your own personal information being displayed in your social network profiles. When do you start getting worried? Maybe never but what if someone used this information in a completely different context and made judgements about yourself? Think about it. 

Dieser Eintrag wurde am 26.4.2008 um 15:11 verfasst und befindet sich in Social Networks, Privacy. Sie können alle Antworten zu diesem Eintrag über den Feed RSS 2.0 mitverfolgen. Hinterlassen Sie eine Antwort oder einen Trackback-Link zu Ihrer eigenen Homepage.