There is a current campaign on the internet for users to not log into Facebook for a whole day on June 6th, 2010. This comes in response to the recent changes made by Facebook to their privacy settings, especially to the one leaving the default "on" instead of "off." Basically it became quite apparent that Facebook is in fact, a business, and that your so-called "personal" data was for sale. To economists and investors, this was no surprise at all. They all expected Facebook to make a genuine attempt to make money at some point, and what better way than demographic targeted advertising?
When it came to the users though, the backlash to the recent changes and integration of Facebook across multiple sharing networks has been less than mixed. It's been negative. There have been constant tweets and articles written about Facebook's complete disregard for our "personal" data.
The claims are valid. Suddenly, it's not just your friends that are viewing your updates and profile, it's their friends, strangers and marketers - unless you change your settings. The setting changes aren't complex, they are quite simple in fact - but the sudden notification by Facebook is what irked a lot of people. They started to worry about their "personal" data. All along though, within all the complaints and stress about "personal" data, people lost sight of a couple of realities.
First off - what is data? For the answer to that question, I turn to Loren Feldman of 1938 Media. In this video, he explains exactly what "data" is.
To sum up, data is what you put in the computer, that goes to the internet and either gets lost or sold. That is what data is. It's inevitable and a side effect of doing business on the internet. It's also a side effect of doing pleasure on the internet, and that is where the adjective "personal" comes in. So what exactly is "personal" on the internet? Well, that's easy. Nothing. Not a damn thing. You may think it is, but it isn't. That's not just paranoia talking - someone, somewhere has access to your personal data. From the I.T. guys running the bank servers, to the advertisers buying it from your email client, to Facebook opening it up for the world to see.
Don't even get me started on privacy. It's the internet. Not a shrinks office. Though that's debatable sometimes.
The inherent problem then is expectations. People expect their "personal" data to remain personal and private. This expectation is set at some point by the site they are entering their personal data into. Or, it's a site like Linkedin, where the expectation of complete transparency is set. The thing is, as Loren mentioned in the video, no one reads the terms of service contracts. When you click the little check box and hit continue, you are agreeing to pages and pages of legalese that pretty much state you don't have any personal data and you have absolutely no privacy on that site. They own it all. This isn't true for every site of course, but a good majority of them.