These days, the issue related to the storage, preservation and sharing of personal data and information literally fed daily-often naively-to modern technology is back on the agenda.
Any action we take within the Net, in fact, whether it is a click, a site visited, a like, a word searched or a purchase made is potentially, and often is, tracked. But how is this data used and where is it stored?
Graph Search: what happens to your data if search becomes Social?
The launch of Graph Search, Facebook’s answer to Google’s search engine, is an opportunity to raise a crucial knot related to what data and information Mark Zuckerberg ‘s team will use to “produce” answers to our queries. Created with the manifest goal of helping people find friends who share their interests, such as “Music my friends like,” rather than “restaurants in London where my friends have been,” it immediately raised a tinderbox of controversy; critics have, in fact, pointed out, how Graph Search could be used de facto to unearth compromising information about 1 billion members. We would like, in this sense, to give you a concrete example of how and in what terms people sharing photos, personal information and “likes” could appear among the results of a wide variety of search queries. The research was carried out by blogger Tom Scott, among the first to be able to test Graph Search in Beta phase before its official release. Would you want to appear among the results of people searching for spouses of people who like Ashley Madison (ed. dating site for busy people)? Or what face would you make if it were a Tesco employee who likes horses (ed. reference to the discovery of equine DNA contained in hamburgers sold by the supermarket chain)? Here are other examples:
- “Current employers of people who like Racism.”
- “Spouses of married people who like [cheat-on-your-partner dating site] Prostitutes”
- “Family members of people who live in China and like [the very very banned] Falun Gong.”
- “Islamic men interested in men who live in Tehran, Iran.”
- “Current employees of Tesco who like horses.”
Protect the data you don’t want to share, we explain how
Dissemination – In the era of big data, we are faced with a difficult dilemma to solve: for while our traceability provides us with a better and simplified enjoyment of the Web, it also opens up the specter of the misuse or detrimental use of this information. Reliability – Data are often cross-referenced assuming that all information released is accurate and truthful; this is often the case but, for example, raise your hand if you have never Googled an absurd query or jokingly put “Like” on unlikely pages. Not all results can be considered, therefore, as reliable, and the new Search tool will have to be taken with a grain of salt (should it be successful) precisely because Social Networks are often used lightly and in a goliardic spirit by the users who “inhabit” them.
Privacy at risk? – But what changes for our Privacy? Actually little compared to before; by subscribing to the privacy policy, in fact, we have agreed since our registration with Fb to the collection and use of our data, information, photos, videos that we share more or less publicly. What changes, or rather will change, is the ease with which others will now be able to track down information that already existed but was perhaps previously accessible only after lengthy searches within your profile. In essence Graph Search does not change members’ privacy settings but will only show what can be seen elsewhere on the site based on what people have chosen to share. How to protect yourself and prevent – We recommend that you carefully read the privacy page from which you can access the sections for:
- control who sees the peresent information on your profile (from the information tab);
- Check photos that you have shared or that contain a tag of you;
- Check posts with geographic tags in the activity log.
In fact, thanks to the recent Privacy settings, it is possible to customize not only the privacy of all sections, but also of individual posts or photos by choosing from (Just Me, Custom -you enter a list or names of people we want to see or not see certain content-, friends, friends of friends, publish). Grapch Search has not yet arrived in Italy, but it is already available for the U.S. or English version of the site; it will have to be seen whether all the enthusiasm and controversy that has preceded it for the past 6 months will be resolved in a media bubble or will open up a new Social (Search) Web scenario, among other things already anticipated by the implementations to Google’s search engine in the last period.