Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: At Rapleaf, your personals are public
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 08:14:05 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: September 1, 2007 5:49:41 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: Re: [IP] At Rapleaf, your personals are public Dave, A quote from that article is telling: "Clavier said Rapleaf is only working off what's already available. "What's interesting is that when you read about what Wink, Rapleaf and others have been doing, it's suddenly like, 'Oh my God, this is a lack of privacy.' But it's only aggregating what's out there. It used to take several Google searches to find the information--now it's a one-stop shop." "Only aggregating"? Hmmm. Sooner or later, people will need to come to terms with the fact that -- for better or worse -- aggregation, just like putting formerly offline data online in the first place, changes data use and abuse potentials in qualitative, not just quantitative ways. Of course, to a significant extent, these kinds of sites are depending upon the naivete of persons exposing their personal information publicly in the first place. Perhaps the most interesting question is how people would feel about the government building these kinds of dossiers on individuals, not just private firms. But of course, with private firms doing the work, any and all comers (including lawyers, disgruntled observers, assorted wackos, and yes, even government agencies) will be able to get whatever goodies they wish from these commercial services in the first instance. Questions: Are we comfortable with this? If people are hurt financially or even physically as a result of information on these aggregation systems, who will shoulder the blame and costs involved? Will the operators of these environments use the popular "It's not my job, man!" excuse and try the pass the buck? --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com - - -
At Rapleaf, your personals are public By Stefanie Olsen The start-up aggregates social-networking profiles and, through TrustFuse, opens the possibility of selling that data to marketers. http://news.com.com/At+Rapleaf%2C+your+personals+are+public/ 2100-1038_3-6205716.html?tag=sas.email ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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Current thread:
- At Rapleaf, your personals are public David Farber (Sep 01)
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- Re: At Rapleaf, your personals are public David Farber (Sep 02)