Cutting Edge Privacy: Facebook and Google
May 17, 2010
What’s going on? The Europeans take umbrage at Google’s alleged collection of personal data whilst Wi-Fi sniffing. Read about the latest Math Club folly in “Google Data Admission Angers Europe.” Now flip to “Can You Quit Facebook?” These two outfits seem to be doing pretty much what they want and then scurrying in different directions to make their behavior somewhat PR-friendly.
In my opinion, the fact that both companies are acting in their own interests is standard operating procedure. The more interesting question is, “Which company is likely to emerge as the victor?”
I found “Ignore The Screams–Facebook’s Aggressive Approach Is Why It Will Soon Become The Most Popular Site In The World” edging toward Facebook’s side of the field. Here’s the passage I found thought provoking:
From a business perspective, in other words, Facebook’s approach to innovation is smart. It’s not always popular, but it works. And if Facebook wants to maintain its competitive edge, it will do what it has to do to smooth over the latest blow-up, and then go forth with the same approach and attitude it has had all along. Step back and think about what Facebook is doing here. It is pioneering an entirely new kind of service, one that most of its users have never seen before, one with no established practices or rules. It is innovating in an area–the fine line between public and private–that has always freaked people out. It is allowing people to communicate and share information in ways they never have before. It is making decisions that affect hundreds of millions of people. And it is trying to stay a step ahead of competitors that would like nothing better than to see it get scared and conservative and thus leave itself open to getting knocked off.
Google’s methods are, if the above analysis is accurate, old school. Facebook is new school. What happens when one old fashioned Soviet leader is replaced with an adjutant to a former Soviet leader? Old methods in a slightly updated package? I do not have an answer, but I think the Facebook frivolity requires close, close observation. It is new in a number of ways.
Stephen E Arnold, May 17, 2010
Freebie
YourOpenBook: Hurry
May 16, 2010
Short honk: A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to a Facebook centric “finding” service. If you have some Facebook skeletons in your closet, you may want to gobble a Rennie before navigating to YourOpenBook. I ran some interesting queries but the goose will not reproduce those results. Fascinating body of content and a basic search engine. Powerful and thought provoking. Know your child’s Facebook name? Azure chip consultant under 30? Coworker? Enjoy before the service suffers an unexpected outage. Note: queries are now returning different results with each refresh.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2010
Freebie.
Google and the Problematic MACs
April 30, 2010
The article “Google Defends Street View Wi-Fi Data Collection” has a killer passage. This is the segment that made it into my handwritten notes:
Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel for Google, countered this in a blog post, saying that the firm does not believe that collecting Wi-Fi network information is illegal. “This is all publicly broadcast information accessible to anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device. Companies like Skyhook have been collecting this data for longer than Google, as well as organizations like the German Fraunhofer Institute,” he wrote.
The key words for me are “believe” and “anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device.” But the context in which I snarfed down this sound bite was the flashback from Google’s stance on China. Navigate to “Baidu’s First-Quarter Profit Soared 165% on Google Exit.” The point of the story is that Google’s “belief” is costing its shareholders money and giving Baidu an implicit okay to sew up the world’s largest market. But even more remarkable is that Baidu has a deal with AliPay, which could strangle Google’s competing service in the world’s largest market.
Yep, believe and beliefs. Running a company is supposed to generate value for shareholders, not these public relations, legal, and financial dust storms. Will Google be able to hang on to the number one rank in top brands?
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2010
Unsponsored post.
Does Online Privacy Exist?
March 19, 2010
This week’s SSN Minute tackles the question, “Does online privacy exist?” David Thimme, contributor to the Strategic Social Network blog, takes a look at this issue. You can view the video from the SSN home page at http://ssnblog.com (just click on the SSN Minute logo) or click here to go directly to YouTube.com. The commentary references an SSN Blog post to help put the social media news in a business context.
Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2010
This was a sponsored post.
A Modest Facebook Hack
September 13, 2009
For you lovers of Facebook, swing on over to Pjf.id.au and read “Dark Stalking on Facebook”. This is search with some jaw power. The key segment was in my opinion:
If a large number of my friends are attending an event, there’s a good chance I’ll find it interesting, and I’d like to know about it. FQL makes this sort of thing really easy; in fact, finding all your friends’ events is on their Sample FQL Queries page. Using the example provided by Facebook, I dropped the query into my sandbox, and looked at the results which came back. The results were disturbing. I didn’t just get back future events my friends were attending. I got everything they had been invited to: past and present, attending or not.
Links and some how to tips. Have fun before the former Googlers and Facebookers hop to it.
Stephen Arnold, September 13, 2009
Social Networks and Security
August 25, 2009
I got roasted at a conference last year when I pointed out that controlling security and privacy in social networks was a challenge. One 20 something told me that I was an addled goose. No push back from me. I stuck to my assertion and endured the smarmy remarks and head shaking. I thought of this young person when I read “Social Networks Leak Personal Information”. Sure, it is one write up in a trade magazine, but it contains a statement I find instructive:
The researchers say that social networks leak information through a combination of HTTP header information — the Referrer header and the Request-URI — and cookies sent to third-party aggregators such as Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s DoubleClick, Google Analytics, and Omniture, among others. As a consequence of this leakage, third-party aggregators can potentially link social network identifiers to past and future Web site visits, thereby identifying a person and his or her online activities.
Right? Wrong? With the young-at-heart going social, old geese like me want to move forward with some caution.
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
E Mail that Deletes Itself
August 8, 2009
Short honk: Want to make your email self destruct? Navigate to the Vanish page. A unit of i2 in the UK was exploring this function but the company moved resources elsewhere. Useful for some; not so useful for others.
Stephen Arnold, August 8, 2009
Google Relationship Map
August 3, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Muckety.com and its relationship map of Google. Same Googlers and former Googler whom I track appear on the map; for example, Anna Patterson (University of Illinois Ph.D., developer of Xift, Google inventor, one of the founders of Cuil.com) and the Digg-hyped Marissa Mayer(keeper of the user interface and authority on Internet anonymity).
But there are some omissions. You can click around as I did, and you may be able to nail down Steve Lawrence or Sanjay Ghemawat. Perfect? Nope. Useful. I think it is suggestive in light of IBM’s alleged “invention” of relationship maps discovered by processing data.
For the purposes of comparison, here’s the Cluuz.com map of Ms. Mayer:
I assume IBM’s relationship maps put these two free systems to shame.
Stephen Arnold, August 3, 2009
Bozeman’s Hot Idea
July 16, 2009
I have had several conversations with individuals who have had in the course of their working lives some connection with law enforcement and military intelligence. What I learned was that the Bozeman idea has traction. The “Bozeman idea” is the requirement for city job applicants to provide their social networking details. Among the details requested as part of the job application process was log in details for social networking services.
According to the Montana News Station’s “Bozeman City Job Requirement Raises Privacy Concerns”,
The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person’s “background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records.” “Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.
What I have now learned is that a number of European entities are discussing the Bozeman idea. Early word – unofficial, of course – is that Bozeman has had a Eureka! moment. Monitoring is much easier if one can log in and configure the system to push information to the interested party.
I am on the fence with regard to this matter. Interesting issue.
Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2009
How to Avoid Enterprise Social Network Sin
July 2, 2009
Network World’s “Seven Deadly Sins of Social Networking Security” reminded me of the assurances about the security of social networks for the enterprise. I did not believe their assurances, and after reviewing Bill Brenner’s article, I wonder how long it will be before the hyperbolists accept some grim realities. One of these is that where humans are involved, security is actually up in the air, maybe non existent.
Mr. Bremmer wrote:
By sharing too much about your employer’s intellectual property, you threaten to put it out of business by tipping off a competitor who could then find a way to duplicate the effort or find a way to spoil what they can’t have by hiring a hacker to penetrate the network or by sneaking a spy into the building.
Yep, humans. His two page article runs through a number of actions that individuals can take to button up security loopholes.
My take: social networks in the enterprise can create some exciting situations. He does not dig into the legal and life threatening issues, preferring the more tame world of legal liability. Not me. I think that social networks can create a world of excitement for pharma companies and intelligence professionals. I don’t have an answer. The 20 somethings just point out that I am an old addled goose and the vulnerabilities multiple like gerbils.
The notion of real time search of posted social comments fresh from Intranets is quite interesting, however.
Stephen Arnold, July 1, 2009
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