Privacy in a Very Open Internet

It’s the sum of the parts of the personal information we have chosen to share online that can present the real “opportunities” for misuse.

As Mike Bogle points out, a Facebook book profile here and a Flickr account there, in isolation aren’t necessarily a problem, but the collective information both contain could be.

For instance mentioning the suburb you live in on Facebook, and featuring a photo of your house on Flickr, could be enough for someone to figure out your address.

Pieced together, the information we reveal about ourselves online yields an amazingly comprehensive view of who we are, and in incredible detail. And more often than not all this information is publicly available to anyone who care to look - including wives, children, bosses, potential-bosses, or even ne’er do wells who would seek to abuse and exploit this information.

A neighbour of mine, who is looking for a new job, has recently switched her Facebook profile to private, and also hidden the links to her friends pages, which usually remain visible on private profiles unless they are explicitly hidden.

While her profile contains nothing especially incriminating, some of the Facebook groups she belongs to are a tad rumbustious at times, and she’d prefer not to take any chances given the inclination of employers to use Google to seek information on potential recruits.

I asked if she had any other, possibly forgotten about social network profiles, such as ICQ (remember that?), or long lost blogs, but in her case Facebook was the first time she had ever dabbled with any any sort of social network.

There may not be too many others in that position though.

Update: Anthony has linked this article detailing some of the problems social network members have run into as a result of being too revealing, or overly ambiguous, at Antbag.