The more I spend time online, the more concerned I’m getting about the amount of personal information that is available to casual observers. It’s practically a biography of your life. I was never one of the people who was particularly concerned with online privacy, but recently, I’ve begun to feel as though perhaps the world knows more about Robert Hof than it really ought to.
Last weekend, my friend Ian Smith over at Datapro was the evildoer who finally convinced me to join Facebook. I have proceeded, like millions before me, to tell people things about my life that I probably shouldn’t have, and to waste countless hours reconnecting with people, from grade school, to exgirlfriends, high school, etc etc etc.
No one piece of information was particularly damning - quite frankly, I don’t have any skeletons in my closet (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) - but taken as a whole, facebook probably has as much information on me as CSIS - maybe more.
One particularly insidious question Facebook asks: WHEN? If you add up all your old friends, coworkers, etc, and put them in a chronology, you get a very useful snapshot of where a person was, what they did, where they worked, and other things which can be used and misused in countless ways.
I’ve started to think seriously about how to deal with this growing level of data surrounding every online person. How should I react? Like a credit report? Seek to get rid of inaccuracies? All but impossible online - once (mis)information is published, its out there forever.
Or, the anarchist point of view - ultimate freedom, ultimate responsibility. With everything you do or say now potentially recorded forever and publicly available, you’re now more accountable for your actions than ever before.
Obviously, I’ll have to think about this some more. What do you think?