Web 2.1

Always the punctual adopter, I joined Facebook around the end of 2007. Since then I've observed many tweaks to Facebook's features, but not until recently when I set up a second account for work, did I really take notice of certain changes, especially those that relate to privacy and sharing of data.

If you don't already know that I'm a huge cynic, then you will do shortly. I'm going to lay out my observations as factually as I can, but they will be tainted with my usual dose of suspicion, fear and resentment. Below is a list of feature creep that I've observed, but there is an underlying point. If you don't want to read the list, just skip to the bit at the end.

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I've noticed a lot of Facebook privacy creep recently. I intend to go into more detail in my next post, but this week saw a new Facebook feature worth a special mention because some are commenting that it breaks Facebook's privacy model. I ran my own test to see for myself that [-Spoiler warning-] it does a bit, but not as much as you might have feared. Read on and decide for yourself whether they are breaking their privacy assurances.

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When I block a commercial user on Twitter I hashtag it #dmblock, a few people have assumed [almost] rightly that DM stands for Direct Message. It could do, buy actually I intended it to stand for Direct Marketing – it could also stand for Data Mining. (more…)

I just became aware of an apparently legitimate US-based company who I shall not provide a link to;
[whois guard] [dot] [com] – operated by [name cheap] [dot] [com].

Their opening gambit "We hate spam like you do" is somewhat ironic when you consider that their services are of enormous help to cyber criminals such as phishing gangs. These ‘people' need to operate domain names, but they must remain untraceable. Protecting their whois data is an obvious step towards concealing their identity. I am not suggesting that companies offering such services are corrupt, rather that it highlights the dichotomy of the internet privacy problem. (more…)