Archive for the 'Privacy' Category

Platform growth over user privacy

Published on January 18, 2011 in DataPortability, Privacy and social computing, with 0 Comments. Tags: , , , , , , .

Facebook announced that data about yourself (like your phone number) would now be shared with applications. Since the announcement, they’ve backed down (and good work to ReadWriteWeb for raising awareness of this).

I’ve been quoted in RWW and other places as saying the following:

“Users should have the ability to decide upfront what data they permit, not after the handshake has been made where both Facebook and the app developer take advantage of the fact most users don’t know how to manage application privacy or revoke individual permissions,” Bizannes told the website. “Data Portability is about privacy-respecting interoperability and Facebook has failed in this regard.”

Let me explain what I mean by that:

This first screenshot is what users can do with applications. Facebook offers you the ability to manage your privacy, where you even have the ability to revoke individual data authorisations that are not considered necessary. Not as granular as I’d like it (my “basic information” is not something I share equally with “everyone”, such as apps who can show that data outside of Facebook where “everyone” actually is “everyone”), but it’s a nice start.

http:__www.facebook.com_settings_?tab=applications

This second screenshot, is what it looks like when you initiate the relationship with the application. Again, it’s great because of the disclosure and communicates a lot very simply.
Request for Permission

But what the problem is, is that the first screenshot should be what you see in place of the second screenshot. While Facebook is giving you the ability to manage your privacy, it is actually paying lipservice to it. Not many people are aware that they can manage their application privacy, as it’s buried in a part of the site people seldom use.

The reason why Facebook doesn’t offer this ability upfront is for a very simple reason: people wouldn’t accept apps. When given a yes or no option, users think “screw it” and hit yes. But what if they did this handshake, they were able to tick off what data they allowed or didn’t allow? Why are all these permissions required upfront, when I can later deactivate certain permissions?

Don’t worry, its not that hard to answer. User privacy doesn’t help with revenue revenue growth in as much as application growth which creates engagement. Being a company, I can’t blame Facebook for pursuing this approach. But I do blame them when they pay lipservice to the world and they rightfully should be called out for it.

Another scandal about data breaches shows the unrealised potential of the Internet as a network

Published on December 13, 2010 in DataPortability and Privacy, with 0 Comments. Tags: , , , .

The headlines today show a data breach of the Gawker media group.

Separately, I today received an email from a web service that I once signed up to but don’t use. The notice says my data has been compromised.

Deviant Art community breach

In this case, a partner of deviantART.COM had been shared information of users and it was compromised. Thankfully, I used one of my disposable email addresses so I will not be affected by the spammers. (I create unique email addresses for sites I don’t know or trust, so that I can shut them off if need be.)

But this once again raises the question: why did this happen? Or rather, how did we let this happen?

Delegated authentication and identity management
What was interesting about the Gawker incident was this comment that “if you logged in via Facebook Connect, in which case you’ll be safe.”

Why safe? For the simple reason that when you connect with Facebook Connect, your password details are not exchanged and used as a login. Instead, Facebook will authenticate you and notify the site of your identity. This is the basis of the OpenID innovation, and related to what I said nearly two years ago that it’s time to criminalise the password anti-pattern. You trust one company to store your identity, and you reuse your identity in other companies who provide value if they have access to your identity.

It’s scandals like this remind us for the need of data interoperability and building out the information value chain. I should be able to store certain data with certain companies; have certain companies access certains types of my data; and have the ability to control the usage of my data should I decide so. Gawker and deviantART don’t need my email: they need the ability to communicate with me. They are media companies wanting to market themselves, not technology companies that can innovate on how they protect my data. And they are especially not entitled for some things, like “sharing” data with a partner who I don’t know or can trust, and that subsequently puts me at risk.

Facebook connect is not perfect. But it’s a step in the right direction and we need to propel the thinking of OpenID and its cousin oAuth. That’s it, simple. (At least, until the next scandal.)

Let’s kill the password anti-pattern before the next web cycle

Published on January 6, 2009 in Privacy, with 2 Comments. Tags: , , , , .

Authenticity required: password?I’ve just posted an explanation on the DataPortability Blog about delegated authentication and the Open Standard OAuth. I give poor Twitter a bit of attention by calling them irresponsible (which their password anti-pattern is – a generic example being sites that force people to give up their passwords to their e-mail account, to get functionality like finding your friends on a social network) but with their leadership they will be a pin-up example which we can promote going forward and well placed in this rapidly evolving data portability world. I thought the news would have calmed down by now, but new issues have come to light further highlighting the importance of some security.

With the death of Web 2.0, the next wave of growth for the Web (other than ‘faster, better, cheaper’ tech for our existing communications infrastructure) will come from innovation on the data side. Heaven forbid another blanket term for this next period, which I believe we will see the rise of when Facebook starts monetising and preparing for an IPO, but all existing trends outside of devices (mobile) and visual rendering (3D Internet) seem to point to this. That is, innovation on machine-to-machine technologies, as opposed to the people-to-machine and people-to-people technologies that we have seen to date. The others have been done and are being refined: machine-to-machine is so big it’s a whole new world that we’ve barely scratched the surface of.

But enough about that because this isn’t a post on the future – it’s on the current – and how pathetic current practices are. I caught up with Carlee Potter yesterday – she’s a young Old Media veteran who inspired by the Huffington Post, wants to pioneer New Media (go support her!). Following on from our discussion, she writes in her post that she is pressured by her friends to add applications on services like Facebook. We started talking about this massive cultural issue that is now being exported to the mainstream, where people freely give up personal information – not just the apps accessing it under Facebook’s control, but their passwords to add friends.

I came to the realisation of how pathetic this password anti-pattern is. I am very aware that I don’t like the fact that various social networking sites ask me for private information like my e-mail account, but I had forgotten how used to the process I’ve become to this situation that’s forced on us (ie, giving up our e-mail account passsword to get functionality).

Argument’s that ‘make it ok’ are that these types of situations are low risk (ie, communication tools). I completely disagree, because reputational risk is not something easily measured (like financial risk which has money to quantify), but that’s not the point: it’s contributing to a broader cultural acceptance, that if we have some trust of a service, we will give them personal information (like passwords to other services) so we can get increased utility out of that service. That is just wrong, and whilst the data portability vision is about getting access to your data from other services, it needs to be done whilst respecting the privacy of yourself and others.

Inspired by Chris Messina, I would like to see us all agree on making 2009 the year we kill the password anti-pattern. Because as we now set the seeds for a new evolution of the web and Internet services, let’s ensure we’ve got things like this right. In a data web where everything is interoperable, something that’s a password anti-pattern is not a culture that bodes us well.

They say privacy is dead. Well it only is if we let it die – and this is certainly one simple thing we can do to control how our personal information about ourselves gets used by others. So here’s to 2009: where we seek the eradication of the password anti-pattern virus!