In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a new company that specializes in social media background checks, ponder the ramifications of Facebook’s upcoming music service, and debate the efficacy of anonymizing data.

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FTC Approves Social Networking Background Check Company

It’s common knowledge that hiring managers and recruiters check job applicants’ social networking profiles prior to making hiring decisions. Now, however, a background check company exists that specializes in digging up dirt on applicants. At Forbes, privacy blogger Kashmir Hill writes about the company, Social Intelligence Corp., and how it works. Quoting the article, “Social Intelligence offers its services to employers en masse and builds files on people. If something job-threatening pops up on Facebook or Flickr or Craigslist in a search of you, you can’t just erase it so that future employers don’t come across it. Social Intelligence puts it into your file — and it stays there for seven years.” (My emphasis added.)

The fact that a company is building personality profiles based on your social networking presence is not all that surprising, but it may shock some people to know that something they said in their profile seven years ago could still come back to haunt them thanks to Social Intelligence.

Facebook Music Service May Push Privacy Boundaries

Facebook’s planned partnership with Spotify and other companies for a new music service may offer users a new way to share and enjoy music, but it could also make privacy-conscious users uncomfortable. PCWorld describes the service, saying that in a special dashboard “users will reportedly see what their friends are listening to at the moment and what songs they’re previously played. If the user has recommended songs or listed them in his or her profile, notifications will appear when friends listen. The dashboard will also display music recommendations from friends and top songs and albums among the user’s social circle.” Presumably, there will be some people who don’t want to share their entire listening history with friends and Facebook’s attempts to automate that process may cause yet another privacy issue for the company.

Facebook Will Be Number One in Display Advertising

According to a prediction from eMarketer Facebook will rank first in display advertising this year, garnering approximately $2 billion dollars in revenue. Facebook’s growth as an advertising platform demonstrates a simple reality about the company. First and foremost, Facebook is about selling advertising. That means that Facebook users aren’t customers, but are actually the products. It’s something to remember when one begins sharing information on the site.

Larry Magid on Facebook Facial Recognition

In a column for the San Jose Mercury News, cybersafety expert Larry Magid writes that concern over facial recognition technology is warranted, but that specific fear over Facebook’s facial recognition feature is not. Quoting the article, “The prospect of someone snapping your picture with a cellphone and instantly comparing it to the billions of photos on Facebook is scary. I’ve already read stories speculating how stalkers and pedophiles could use it to identify and help track down potential victims. If that were possible, it would indeed be horrendous. What Facebook is actually doing is allowing users to compare a newly uploaded picture against pictures of people with whom they are already friends. If there is a potential match, Facebook suggests who that person might be. It’s up to the user to confirm the match and decide whether to tag the person.”

Magid goes on to clarify that facial recognition technology may still be an invasion of privacy, and it’s worth investigating possible regulatory action to prevent abuse. He also makes the important point that users have to be smart about the technology as well, writing that we should “remember that we live in a digital world where our ability to control what people know about us will forever remain a moving target.”

Does Anonymizing Data Help Protect Privacy?

Many companies claim that user data is safe for sharing because it’s been “anonymized.” But how anonymous is data really? This article from Ars Technica discusses the issue and a new report from Ontario Information & Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D.and Khaled El Emam, Ph.D of the University of Ottawa. The report’s authors recognize that anonymizing data isn’t perfect, as evidenced by numerous high-profile instances where anonymous data was de-anonymized, but that it’s still an important part of protecting user privacy and security. To prove this point, the study team attempted to re-identify 15,000 anonymized individuals and only ended up successfully identifying two, “for a match rate of 0.013 per cent.”