Between Zuckerberg’s proclamations, data-mining, mobile tracking, and all the other ways our lives
are exposed, every day someone is echoing the sentiment that privacy is dead. I agree that the degree to which we’re able to keep information of any sort truly private is eroding; I don’t agree that privacy is dead. What’s dead is our ability to take privacy for granted.
Privacy has moved from being a passive, expected state of things to the active, ongoing maintenance and protection of personal information where the onus falls on each individual. Facebook’s constantly fluctuating privacy settings are a fine example. Protecting any information you may deem personal requires repeatedly interacting with the site’s ever-changing “new and improved” settings. At this point, information privacy on Facebook can be maintained only through vigilance.
Blizzard’s recent experience with Real ID reinforced that anonymity we may take for granted can end at any time. We’re left with a choice. We can take the time to pay attention to the activities of companies with whom we share personal information or we can just go along for the inevitable ride. The companies we trust today may, in an effort to “be social,” either inadvertently or intentionally expose information we prefer kept out of the public eye. Those changes can occur at any time with or without full disclosure. It’s a risk we take on a daily basis and one we should contemplate every time we choose to register with a site.
With each new interaction, we risk our identities, interests, relationships, and any other information we’ve chosen to share being exposed to the world-at-large. In reality, while we should think twice before we share information, we often don’t. At some point, we’ve all registered somewhere we probably shouldn’t have or shared information that, on second thought, we wish we hadn’t. We can’t take those decisions back. Once the information is out there, we no longer have control of it. It no longer belongs to us as much as we may wish to make it so.
The bottom line is that you need to share information wisely and if you have reason to be concerned about what might pop up, remember that online reputation management isn’t just for corporations. Change privacy settings, delete accounts, request information be removed, and do whatever else you need to do to maintain the reputation you want online. The days of thoughtlessly and anonymously bounding across the internet are long since gone, if they ever existed at all. If you don’t want someone to know what you’re doing, don’t do it – whether you’re online or offline.
