Privacy and Web 2.0

To start off a discussion on privacy, I first decided to define what it actually is. Below is what I found compliments of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy) "Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively."Personal information includes but is not limited to: Name, Sex, Address, Political Beliefs, Religious Beliefs, Medical History, Income, ID numbers, etc.

Now with this understanding, privacy is a big concern for some while not so much for others when it comes to Web 2.0 technologies. Differences can be due to things like generational gaps, personality traits, past experiences, etc. It’s been my observation that younger generations are much more liberal with there personal information while older generations tend to tightly hold their information and are hesitant in providing it. Additionally, there are individuals who are in the middle, myself, for instance. I post personal pictures; post employment related items, and sometimes even will comment on religious issues but providing things like my home address makes me nervous. ID theft in today’s world is a very big concern and I feel like the more you provide about yourself, the more information someone has to put together a faulty ID and boom....you are left with a mess you have to clean up.

Recently I heard of cases in the real estate industry where people were providing virtual house tours online. The next thing you see are an increase in burglaries in these homes where the thieves seemed to know all of the ins and out of the home. Now that’s scary. Even on Facebook recently, someone’s account was hijacked and the imposter changed his status message to say: "BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!" This victims’ friends ended up getting scammed and lost a good deal of money. (http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/post-1.html#%20posts) The ability of web 2.0 technologies to collect personal information is a huge concern. Users usually don’t know what is being collected, what it is being used for, can access their own information, and don’t know how their information is being protected if at all.

The following article discusses what is termed the ""Four principles of the Privacy Manifesto" and I think it is worth a mention. (http://gigaom.com/2008/01/08/a-privacy-manifesto-for-the-web-20-era/)
1. Every customer has the right to know what private information is being collected.
2. Every customer has the right to know the purpose for which the data is being collected, in advance.
3. Each customer owns his or her personal information.
4. Customers have a right to expect that those collecting their personal information will store it securely.

I think this is a pretty good start where users can actually start protecting themselves.