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Privacy versus prefacy, 12 February 2012
It's been a while, but I've been immersed in a new project in the world of wine. But Facebook's stock market launch has intensified the debate about privacy and prefacy on the web - and made me rethink the issue. In a recent New York Times article, Somini Sengupta writes that 'Europe's moves to protect Internet privacy have given rise to a thorny question: How do the laws and mores of nations manage, if at all, the multinational companies that now govern our digital lives?'
He cites a 24 year Austrian, Max Schrens, who requested his own Facebook file. It turned out to be 1,222 pages long and included wall posts he had deleted, old messages and information he didn't enter himself.
He asks whether we can we trust companies like Facebook and Google. Do they need to be more carefully regulated? How easy is this to do? Every European country has a privacy law but the USA has no law that spells out the control and use of online data. Then, social mores around privacy vary widely across the globe. But the biggest challenge may be the speed of technological innovation. 'Just as it becomes remarkably easy for us to share our information with others, it also becomes cheaper and easier to crunch and analyse that information - and store it for ever'.
I think we may become increasinlgy guarded about our public profiles, just as we become more open with those we trust. But if those people are your friends and they are on Facebook, how will that work in practice - particularly for today's generation of kids who turn on Facebook and chat the minute they wake up?
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2012-03-21 18:15 Lindsey22Kline