In a press conference today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a major enhancement to Facebook’s messaging system that will allow users to send or receive messages from Facebook via traditional email accounts. But what does the announcement mean for user privacy?
Before tackling the privacy question, here are some more details on the new “Facebook e-mail.” First off, it’s not e-mail, or at least Facebook isn’t calling it e-mail. Rather, as explained by Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin in this USA Today report, “People are given the choice to opt in to having a Facebook email address as a way to have one destination for all of their messages. But, this product is not email. It is modeled much more after Chat.”
You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn’t have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message.
We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they’re on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.
Facebook is rolling out the service to only a few thousand users at first, but plans to offer the service to all Facebook users in the coming months.
Perhaps predicting that there would be concerns over privacy, Facebook has been proactive in stating that the enhanced Facebook messaging system does still allow for customized privacy settings. Using privacy controls, Facebook users can choose who is allowed to send them messages. Facebook also promises that it will crack down hard on spammers and that developers will be unable to contact users without their permission.
But wait, there’s more…
Though these are admirable steps, there are still other privacy questions. For instance, how does advertising fit into the new messaging system? In this case, Facebook’s message system is like traditional e-mail. Just like Google serves up ads in Gmail based on the content of your e-mails, Facebook will serve up ads based on the content of your messages.
Another question is how far back do the messages go? Going back to the Facebook blog post, we see Joel Seligstein write,
“I’m intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From ‘hey nice to meet you’ to ‘do you want to get coffee sometime’ to ‘our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight.’ That’s a really cool idea.”
Thankfully, Facebook allows users to delete conversations, negating the “coolness” of this feature, but the question of how long the conversations remain on the Facebook servers is still (as far as we can tell) unanswered.
Bottom line: Facebook’s announcement means that the way we choose to share information and interact with one another online will be even more important in shaping our offline reputations. Whether you’re texting, chatting, or e-mailing, whatever content you share needs to be fully vetted before it hits the web. Don’t let an errant message rob you of your good name online.
Here’s a Fact Sheet from Facebook explaining more details about the specifics of the new messaging system:
In today’s Quick Hits, Facebook plans a possible e-mail feature, an NYC official sues Google to reveal an anonymous blogger, and why hitting “send” means giving up control over your message.
Many tech analysts are predicting that Facebook will announce its own e-mail service today, creating a rival to Google’s popular Gmail service. If Facebook does announce the e-mail service as expected, one Silicon Valley analyst says it could “fundamentally change the nature of e-mail.” However groundbreaking the service may be, however, it still would carry Facebook’s negative stigma regarding privacy. As Melissa Bell explains in this article for the Washington Post, many users may be too concerned about the security of their personal data to use a Facebook e-mail service.
A recent Pew Research study revealed that “social media use among internet users aged 65 and older grew 100 percent last year” and that “half (47 percent) of internet users aged 50-64 use social media now, an 88 percent growth from the previous year. ” This CBS News report examines why older generations are latching on to social media in higher numbers and interviews social media expert Brian Solis to learn more.
New York City transit union chief John Samuelson has filed court papers demanding that Google reveal the identity of an individual who has been posting anonymous criticisms against him. According to CBS News, “Samuelsen says in court papers filed Friday that the blog has repeatedly defamed him with false accusations of incompetence and financial improprieties.” There is precedent for Samuelsen’s lawsuit. In the past couple of years, a handful of people have successfully sued Google to reveal their attackers (including ex-model Liskula Cohen). Successfully pursuing legal action against a large Internet company is beyond the reach of most normal people.
This article from the Boston Globe explains how private online communications are never really private, as long as one party decides to forward the content on to someone new. Citing a number of examples, including the recent Cooks Source Magazine case, Joseph Kahn talks with several Internet and privacy experts including Michael Lerner who states simply, “An e-mail is as private as a postcard.”
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, L. Gordon Crovitz voices his opposition to legislative regulations on data privacy issues, saying “regulators have no reason to dictate one right answer to these balancing acts among interests that consumers are fully capable of making for themselves.” In his op-ed, Crovitz also touches on the issue of censorship, discussing how a “Right to be Forgotten” as proposed in Europe recently necessarily involves the government censoring certain information.
It’s no secret that perceptions of privacy vary greatly between the United States and Europe. But as European data privacy regulators become more aggressive in regulating data collection, can Internet companies like Google and Facebook continue to operate successfully under two sets of rules?
Recently, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik appeared as a guest on BBC Newsnight to discuss the differences between U.S. and European data privacy laws and what they mean for the Internet industry.
In today’s Quick Hits, we have tons of news from Washington D.C., plus a criminal online harassment case from New Zealand that reads like an episode of “Law and Order.”
Cecilia Kang at the Washington Post recently sat down with two privacy and communications attorneys to discuss the likelihood of Internet privacy legislation coming from the now newly bi-partisan Congress. The three discuss the possibility of a “Do Not Track” registry, similar in spirit to the “Do Not Call” registry, which helped limit telemarketing calls and why Google and other major tech companies oppose such a measure.
Although the FTC let Google off the hook for unintentionally spying on unsecured Wi-Fi networks, consumer privacy groups are still pushing for a deeper investigation. According to this report in The Hill, “Consumer Watchdog has called on Congress to hold hearings on a major privacy breach by the Internet search engine giant, and insists that CEO Eric Schmidt should come to Washington to testify.” If Congress did initiate a hearing into Google, it would come in addition to a recently announced FCC investigation.
This article in the Economist discusses the issue of data protectionism by comparing Google and Facebook to absolute monarchies and calling Internet users “digital serfs.” As in a monarchy, it is the serfs that make the kingdoms strong, and in the Internet world that means companies are sparring aggressively to ensure that they maintain control of user data. Because our lives are increasingly tied to our online reputations, the fight over who owns the bulk of our data could become quite bloody, in a strictly business sense.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Obama administration is preparing a stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a new position to oversee the effort.” The move is tied to the recent announcement of a privacy task force tied to the Commerce Department and the Department of Justice. This news, paired with the FCC’s investigation into Google and calls for legislation on privacy in Congress demonstrates that Internet privacy will be one of the most important issues in Washington D.C. in the next few years.
In New Zealand, a 20-year-old man was sentenced to jail for four months after pleading guilty to multiple charges of harassment, including posting a nude photo of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook and hacking into her account to make the image accessible to the public. The judge in the case applied a law that was originally intended for print-based publications to issue his decision. In statements explaining the sentencing, he said, “Technology can’t be used in this way. You would do incalculable damage to someone’s reputation.”
This article in USA Today discusses how law enforcement agencies have begun, “digging deep into the social media accounts of applicants, requesting that candidates sign waivers allowing investigators access to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other personal spaces.” According to a survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, “more than a third of police agencies review applicants’ social media activity during background checks.” Given the fact that police officers are meant to be pillars of society, and that inappropriate social media content can damage their credibility during trials, it’s no surprise to see an increased emphasis on online reputation research.
According to a report in the Washington Post, “T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria got a look at the downside of social networking in recent days, as school officials and police worked to get a Facebook page that included vulgar descriptions of female students taken down from the popular Web site.” This kind of incident is not out of the norm among high school-aged teens and is a reflection of the way that some teens are using the web to harass one another outside of the school walls. Given the rising problem of online bullying among teens, T.C. Williams administrators are right to try and remove the content before it can cause lasting reputation damage to students.
In today’s Quick Hits, the word “breach” is debated, more news on the National Labor Relations Board’s fight on a behalf of a worker fired for Facebook, and a possible conclusion to the Cooks Source Magazine debacle.
In his Faster Forward column for the Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro argues that it is misleading to use the term “breach” in regard to Google’s Wi-Fi snooping case and the incident in which some third-party Facebook app developers shared user data. Pegoraro believes that “a real privacy breach doesn’t involve a remix or collection of data that’s already out there for anybody to see. It exposes information that nobody else should know, in ways that lead to the loss of money or security or otherwise fairly earn the adjective ‘Orwellian.’” It is an interesting argument and one which is often parroted by technology advocates when discussing privacy reform.
CNN has picked up the story of how the National Labor Relations Board is backing an employee who was fired over a Facebook posting disparaging her manager. In comments for the article, Jonathan Kreisberg, the NLRB’s regional director in Hartford, Connecticut, said ”You are permitted to talk about terms and conditions with employees or anyone else, it’s public because you are protected under the National Labor Act. [In this case] it was Souza’s…own page; she did this on her own time in her own home. This case is different because in this situation it happened online and the company’s rules were unlawfully broad.” The issue of whether employers can crack down on workers over their online comments has already been and will continue to be a contentious debate. In a special editorial to CNN, Vanderbilt professor Bruce Barry offer his take on the case.
Cooks Source Magazine earned the scorn of the Web when it published a woman’s blog post without her permission and, worse yet, gave her a snarky response when she requested an apology. In a textbook case of why online reputation management is important, Cooks Source Magazine’s Facebook page was promptly overwhelmed with thousands of negative comments and coverage of the story even reaching the New York Times. Since then, the magazine has offered a meager apology, but it’s unlikely that it will be unable to ever undo the damage it has sustained online.
While the FTC has decided to drop its investigation into Google’s accidental collection of unencrypted Wi-Fi data, the Federal Communications Commission has taken up the cause. The FCC investigation may potentially be more damaging to Google than the FTC investigation. According to Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, ”Intercepting communications traffic is a serious crime in the United States. It’s one of the strongest privacy laws we have because of the strong privacy presumption in network communications.”
In a guest post for Forbes, Holly Paul, the U.S. recruiting leader for PwC LLP, offers advice on managing one’s online reputation. Paul’s basic advice is solid and includes such tried and true techniques of monitoring your name online, setting up professional profiles, and protecting sensitive data on social networking websites.
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