Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot » privacy

Google StreetView -> Privacy video

Owen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:38:41 +0000

A lot has been said about Google StreetView and its impact on people’s privacy. For those of you who haven’t come across it yet, Google StreetView is an enhancement on Google Maps which allows you to look at photos of a particular street and visually walk down it. It’s an awesome feature, especially if, like me, you find it hard to visualise a location from a map; but there’s a lot of debate concerning privacy infringements; particularly that of people who are snapped up as Google drives around taking photos.

Today I came across a video Google have put up which outlines the steps they take to protect people’s privacy; how they scan for artefacts like people’s faces and car number plates and blur them out; and how they respond to people’s requests to remove similar information. It’s a cute video, check it out below:

Facebook violates your data ..

Owen — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:11:12 +0000

… or does it? Just read an article in ValleyWag that points at a number of data privacy infractions that Facebook employees have allegedly taken part in. The infractions range from checking out a date’s details, seeing what profiles they have visited etc. The truth is, having that amount of data at your fingertips can be tempting. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a social network, membership management software or a club database, having data available can be a temptation.

Or is it? Mining the data, finding trends, seeing what you can do with the information you have available are all part of being effective in your job. If Facebook employees decide to zoom down to an individual to see what profiles he’s visiting, then so be it. Manipulating that data is part of their day job and sometimes curiousity is that encourages people to learn how far they can push a system’s boundaries. I think Valleywag can be sensationalist at times and this is one of those cases. Any DBA will tell you that if there is data of interest in a database, they can find a way to extract it; and in doing so, they learn more about the database, the data and the way people are using their system. Just let them get on with it!

Love FaceBook? What about your privacy?

Owen — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:17:58 +0000

My friend Legal Andrew has just put together a brilliant post after taking some time to study FaceBook‘s Terms of Service. He maintains that your data on FaceBook isn’t private and also points out a number of terms that everyone should be aware of when contributing to their website.

For me however, I believe that living in today’s world necessitates a mandatory loss of privacy. If you want privacy, then lock yourself up at home and don’t speak to anyone .. and don’t interact online. How do you feel about it ?

Google’s Policies on Privacy get blasted

Owen — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:49:59 +0000

Seems like Google has received a scathing report from Privacy International about their policies and attitudes with respect to privacy. As you may be aware, Google is the number 1 search engine, but it’s actually last on this last with regards to privacy issues. People work with Google every day, whether you’s searching for something elusive or trying to do? some themed search marketing, you’re bound to leave some trail in Google. And besides this, Google’s job is actually to sift through? data to find information about things and people, so having all this information is really valuable to it.

There is some debate around how credible the report actually is; turns out there’s a lot of second-hand information in there. SearchEngineLand has a great post which goes into detail on how the report is made up and how Privacy International came up with the verdict. If you don’t want to read the whole report, read their post. Also, Scoble has an interesting take on where they are going wrong with their PR, in that they are focusing on the wrong thing and forgetting the interests of the masses, a factor that has made them great. Interesting debate.

Property Ladder

Owen — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:50:38 +0000

I’ve been watching Property Ladder recently on TV. I hadn’t watched it much in the past, but since we cancelled out Sky Subscription, I’ve become a lot less choosy about what I watch. Basically we’re trying to watch less television and one way to do this is to limit the choice available. Even without a subscription though, there’s quite a few things to watch. Anyway, it’s on Channel 4 and there’s more than one property show there. I’m talking about the one with Sarah Beeny (who I have just found out has her own blog too)

While digging around about her I came across a property blog that actually has an entire section dedicated to Sarah Beeny. There are numerous articles about her, ranging from trivia and facts, all the way to critique of the show. It’s quite interesting how people will fixate on a particular person and find out everything about them. And in today’s information age, it’s not really hard to find out certain pieces of information.

Here are some things I didn’t know that I learnt from the website:

She was born the same year as me – 9th January 1972 to be exact
She is married, has two kids and has had one miscarriage
Besides being involved in property, she has recently launched an Internet dating agency
She grew up wanting a breast reduction

It’s quite frightening when you think about how much information about her can be found online. Especially when you consider that certain facts like date of birth are used by banks and other institutions as security questions!

Anyway, back to Sarah Beeny, the website also has a section on photos of her, a number of tips she has given and a whole wealth of other facts and articles. If you want to learn more about her, then just check it out