You never know who you’re going to run into in Davos. While at the World Economic Forum, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik met up with Silicon Valley celebrity and noted tech evangelist Robert Scoble. Scoble, always ready to share with his legions of followers, recorded a short interview with Michael about online privacy, Reputation.com’s new Facebook application uProtect.it, and Michael’s impressions of the World Economic Forum.
You can listen to the segment using the CinchCast media player below. For up-to-the-minute news from Davos, follow Michael Fertik and Robert Scoble on Twitter.
Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik is currently in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. During his time in Davos, Michael has the opportunity to speak with many business leaders and politicians about the important subject of Internet privacy and online reputation.
In a special column for Reuters, Michael Fertik shares some of his insights the evolution of online security and privacy and what Davos attendees are doing to help address the growing cybersecurity threats in the world.
Check out an excerpt of Michael’s column below:
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has named cybersecurity one of the top five risks in the world. In its Global Risks 2011 report, the WEF’s Risk Response Network nominated cybersecurity alongside planetary risks posed by demography, resource scarcity, trepidation about globalization, and, of course, WMDs. This is heady stuff. Cybersecurity has officially gone prime time. This week in Davos, I’ll be moderating and contributing to panel sessions on this topic.
The timing could not be more ripe. Right now we are witnessing the convergence of multiple seismic risks to data integrity. Social networks capture and mine ever larger amounts of data about humans and companies, opting users into increasingly invasive data collection with little or no notice. Apps operating on social networks and smartphones continually pull data streams about friends, families, personal connections, contacts, geo-location, behavior, preferences, tastes, and health habits — even when these data streams are unrelated to the stated purpose of the applications.
We’ve seen search sites mine public data, semi-public data, purchased information that was supposedly private, and even scraped or stolen data, and aggregate them together for sale and resale on the open web, claiming cover of current law. To date, the Internet economy has been nearly perfectly stacked against individuals’ control over their data. The proliferation of deep digital information about every individual on earth, along with the correlated explosion of its easy and unwitting accessibility by third parties, poses a “personal WikiLeaks” threat to each of us.
Yesterday, Reputation.com launched uProtect.it, our new free Facebook privacy application that gives users the ability to encrypt their messages and protect their online content.
Since our big announcement, uProtect.it has been gaining a lot of buzz in the tech sphere, with multiple reports talking about the innovative new app.
Here’s a wrap-up of some of the great reports on uProtect.it so far:
In the first report about the new app, the Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries talked to Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik about uProtect.It and the “growing number of tools designed to help people protect their information online.”
David Kirkpatrick sat down with Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to talk about uProtect.it. A few hours later, he wrote an enthusiastic piece calling the application a “Facebook Privacy Breakthrough,” high praise from somebody who literally wrote the book on Facebook.
In a recent post, Forbes privacy blogger Kashmir Hill (whose writings on breaking privacy news have appeared in our daily Quick Hits repeatedly) talked about the many privacy products on the market and discussed uProtect.it with Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik. Hill writes that uProtect.It “is designed for those who want to be part of the social network, but don’t want the network to know what they’re up to,” which is an increasing segment of consumers.
In addition to these three excellent articles, uProtect.it has been covered at AOL’s Switched.com, in a report for TMC.net, and in the UK publication The First Post.
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the irony of the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page is hacked on the same day that the company announced new security measures for users.
Per ABC News, “A hearing has been postponed in a case involving a Connecticut woman fired from her job after she made disparaging remarks about her boss on Facebook while the two sides discuss a possible settlement.” As we’ve discussed previously, this hearing will play an important role in shaping how companies devise social media policies and could have far-reaching implications about what is and is not a fire-worthy offense online.
Facebook shared some great news on its blog today, writing that it is expanding the use of HTTPS secured connections throughout the site. Facebook also announced a unique form of social authentication that kicks in when Facebook suspects a user’s account has been accessed by someone else. This social authentication works by showing pictures of the user’s friends and then requiring the user to select the friend’s name. It is a unique solution, but it has raised some eyebrows among privacy activists who say that the friend photos shouldn’t be accessible in any way to anyone besides the actual user.
Ironically, on the same day that Facebook tried to reassure users that their privacy and security is okay, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Fan Page was hacked. Facebook quickly removed the hacked message, which called for Facebook to become a “social business” and let users invest, and hasn’t issued a response about the incident. It is unclear at this time how the hacker accessed administrative control over the Fan Page.
A new Facebook advertising feature called “Sponsored Stories” repurposes user content to promote brands. “Sponsored Stories” will search for any mention of a brand, such as in a check-in, like, or status update, and will then feature them as an ad to the user’s friends. The ads will be clearly labeled as “Sponsored Stories” and will only appear in front of a user’s friends, who would have seen the update anyway, and will also take into account a user’s privacy settings. While these privacy protections are in place, however, Facebook has not provided a way to opt-out of the new advertising scheme, rubbing some privacy advocates the wrong way.
Rachel Sterne, who was just named New York City’s first chief digital officer, has already shown her digital savvy — by increasing the privacy restrictions on her Facebook page. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sterne locked up her account because of plans to create a better public forum for talking about New York City social media initiatives and the fact that her private social networking profile is for her and her friends.
Yesterday, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik shared a “Beginner’s Guide to Davos,” for first-time World Economic Forum attendees. In his latest dispatch for the Harvard Business Review, Fertik shares insights from his first day at the Forum, and how thousands of entrepreneurs, politicians, and other civic leaders are working together to solve global problems.
Check out Michael Fertik’s full day one dispatch below:
The Congress Center is buzzing. The crowd is hyper-international, and business is on everyone’s lips. You probably overhear the word “China” or “Obama” every third minute. It’s been snowing, but there’s no sense of that inside the building, which has been set up like a small, self-contained city.
This morning I participated in a working session between the WEF’s Technology Pioneers and Social Entrepreneurs. We had an active and impassioned discussion on global topics including health, water, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and employment. The people here are working on fascinating projects. One fellow has funded a project that has collectivized waste pickers in the developing world and raised their daily income from 65 cents to seven dollars. By doing so, he has also made health insurance affordable and possible for the same community. Another, based in South Africa, has paired international designers with local craftsmen to increase the value of the hand-made goods for export, raising their incomes from 40% to 100%. A third is focused on getting more high school students to go to college in the United States, driven by the fact that the top contributor to urban growth is local college attainment levels.
Michael Fertik will continue covering Davos for the Harvard Business Review and other news outlets during the week. Check back here often for the latest updates.
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