I wrote earlier this month about the fascinating relationship many social networks have with their users. Whilst many services are free, the flip side is that sites sell the huge volume of data we give them to advertisers. Facebook sell our social data, Amazon sell our commercial data, and so on. The whole relationship is typified by the cartoon below.
So what’s the answer? Well that very much depends on how you feel about your data being sold in this way, and indeed what kind of data you disclose. A senior government security official has stoked the fires today by suggesting that people should sign up to social sites using fake data in order to protect their security.
The comments come from Andy Smith, an internet security chief at the Cabinet Office. He suggests that you should only give your real details to trusted sites, such as official government ones.
“When you put information on the internet do not use your real name, your real date of birth,” he told a Parliament and the Internet Conference in Portcullis House, Westminster.
“When you are putting information on social networking sites don’t put real combinations of information, because it can be used against you.”
Simon Milner, Facebook’s head of policy in the UK and Ireland, said he will be talking with Smith to try and get him to change his point of view.
It seems that the issue boils down to two distinct issues.
Personal branding vs Online security
Suffice to say there are distinct branding benefits of putting yourself out there online. You want to ensure that when people Google your name that they find things that represent you in a positive light. Are there risks involved with ensuring that is the case though? Personally I don’t think so. You control what information is published about you online. Privacy settings are such that you don’t have to show things like your date of birth to the public if you don’t want, and the degree of personal disclosure is your perogative.
You can certainly build an excellent personal brand without posting intimate details about yourself on Facebook or Twitter. To an extent I can sympathise with Smith’s point of view in that it is strange (to me) just how much people do share online, but there’s no demand from social sites for you to be so open with the content you give them. Whilst identity theft is an issue, I don’t think we need to go as far as using fake IDs when interacting with social sites. There are plenty of more sensible approaches you can take to preserve your privacy without resorting to that kind of approach.
Keeping communities free and safe
There is also the question of how an army of fakes would impact upon the social sites we so enjoy. The obvious drawback is that advertisers would be much less keen on buying data that they cannot rely on to be accurate. If they’re not willing to pay to advertise on sites, it’s pretty likely that such sites will not remain free for very long. If we want to continue enjoying free services then we need to understand the bargaining agreement we’re entering into.
There is also of course the legal approach to things. Using anonymous usernames has been a factor of the web for decades, but with the rise of social networks things have entered the mainstream in a big way. With such popularity comes the risk of negative content being posted. There have been numerous instances recently of people being prosecuted for what they post online. Suffice to say that if people are using fake details, such prosecutions become much harder to make. If we want to keep our communities safe it certainly helps to know we have the law on our side.
What do you think of Smith’s opinion? How much information do you share online?
To be honest I kinda agree with him. I don't want these sites selling my information to the highest bidder.
Andy Smith makes sense, and its a practice any sensible person has been using online for years. With regular stories of sensitive data being leaked or hacked only an idiot would submit sensitive personal data onto social media sites such as Facebook.
I concur with you Jim – it's making me want to rethink my online strategy now… and the cartoon above is very thought provoking!
So this guy is advising folks to break the law. Hmm.
Seems all rather paranoid to me. Treat the information you share online as though it were in the public domain and you won't go too far wrong.
Because birth date is often used as a security question for banking/healthcare I agree with this practice (and have done for some time). A postal address has no place on a social site anyway either. So my correct name and 1st of April for my birthday should prevent too much sniffing. Hopefully..
Funny debate, in a not-so-funny way. I kinda agree with the fact one should not divulge too much information on social networks, i.e. date of birth, for example. But really, I think the real problem is elsewhere, namely in our lazy human nature not properly reading & addressing privacy settings.
On Facebook, for example, anyone can control their privacy settings in order to publish photos, comments or videos to friends only, friends of friends or the general public. Still, everyday I see folks posting stuff on "public" mode when clearly, it ought to stay private, or perhaps only between friends. So it's not just a matter of building fake profiles, but rather how far you share private details with a real profile, and how you manage your digital footprint. I realize it's not accessible to all people active on the net, but the comment made by this UK official is clearly ill-advised in that sense…
I've never used my real name online, except when making payments through secured connections to reputable companies.
Thoroughly agree with the official in question. As a user of the internet for over 15 years now; my best advice is never to publish any personal information about yourself that could be used against you in any way. You never know who's reading.
I'd love to see a bit more detail on the "negative content" Mr. Smith mentions. Does the author, as it seems, favour some sort of internet police?
The thing is that most people already have too much info. floating around about themselves so now it's too late to do what Mr. Smith recommends. Also, following Mr. Smith's advice would make it a nightmare for police and law enforcement to track criminals. I also think that hate speech would be more rampant with less accountability. We all need to be accountable for what we put online – "With great power comes great responsibility". Things like birth date and addresses can no longer be hidden in countries like the US, regardless whether you are online or not, your info is.
Excellent point. The comic illustrates how we regard free services on the Internet. But if we all used fake information on social sharing sites, the value of those sites would disappear. No one would know how to find their friends if all of their friends were using aliases.
I agree about the birthday information. Best to hide at least the year from prying eyes. I get birthday requests on Facebook from apps all the time and i'm not inclined to divulge that information to an anonymous third party.
The is to many fake people out their hiding behind fake ID and made up information or useing software so no one know who they re.I agree about the birthday information,but some people will sell your information so how do you protect them?..
Its a difficult one to ponder alright, on the one hand you have people putting up fake profiles in an attempt to scam people and on the other hand, if you cant be sure that your details arent going to be used in a way that you dont want then fake profiles seem a very tempting way to go. Now i dont beleive everyone is going to suddenly put up fake info so we dont really have to worry too much about the value of such sites dropping but maybe if there was some kind of protection stating that your info cant be sold on with out your permission we wouldnt need to fake it although i really cant see that happening, can you?
No way Jose