| Jessica Rose Bennett, 29, spends 30 hours a week on social-networking sites—while at work. She is an excessive drinker, a drug user, and sexually promiscuous. She swears a lot, and spends way beyond her means shopping online. Her writing ability? Superior. Cost to hire? Cheap.
In reality, only part of this is true: yes, I like a good bourbon. But drugs? That comes from my reporting projects—and one in particular that took me to a pot farm in California. The promiscuity? My boyfriend of five years would beg to differ on that, but I did once write a story about polyamory. I do spend hours on social-networking sites, but it's part of my job. And I'm not nearly as cheap to hire as the Web would have you believe. (Take note, future employers!)
The irony, of course, is that if this were a real job search, none of this would matter—I'd have already lost the job. But this is the kind of information surmisable to anybody with a Web connection and a bit of background data, who wants to take the time to compile it all. For this particular experiment, we asked ReputationDefender, a company that works to keep information like this private, to do a scrub of the Web, with nothing but my (very common) name and e-mail address to go on. Three Silicon Valley engineers, several decades of experience, and access to publicly available databases like Spokeo, Facebook, and LinkedIn (no, they didn't do any hacking)—and voilà . Within 30 minutes, the company had my Social Security number; in two hours, they knew where I lived, my body type, my hometown, and my health status. (Note: this isn't part of ReputationDefender's service; they did the search—and accompanying graphic— exclusively for NEWSWEEK, to show how much about a person is out there for the taking.)
It's scary stuff, but scarier when you realize it's the kind of information that credit-card companies and data aggregators are already selling, for pennies, to advertisers every day. Or that it's the kind of data, as The Wall Street Journal revealed last week, that's being blasted to third parties when you download certain apps on Facebook. (Under close watch by Congress, Facebook has said it's working to “dramatically limit” its users' personal exposure.) “Most people are still under the illusion that when they go online, they're anonymous,” says Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But in reality, “every move they make is being collected into a database.”
This, say tech experts, is the credit score of the future—a kind of aggregated ranking for every aspect of your life. It's an assessment that goes beyond the limits of targeted advertising—you know, those pesky shoe banners that follow a visit to Zappos, made possible by tracking devices we know as “cookies”—by making use of the data in ways that are more personal and, potentially, damaging. Think HMOs, loan applications, romantic partners. Let's say you've been hitting up a burger joint twice a week, and you happen to joke, in a post on Twitter, how all the meat must be wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. Suddenly your health-insurance premiums go up. Now imagine your job is listed on Salary.com; your vacation preferences linked to Orbitz. Think how this could affect your social standing, or your ability to negotiate a raise or apply for a loan. Finally, what if you could know, based on Web history and location tracking, that a prospective mate had a communicable disease. Wouldn't you pay to find out? “Most of us just don't realize the potential consequences of this,” says Lorrie Cranor, a Web-privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University.
Ask a Reporter Anything (On Chatroulette) NEWSWEEK puts the nail in the coffin of the Chatroulette.com trend as staffers log on in an attempt to discuss newsworthy topics. Few, it turns out, are looking for our intellectual experience.
Think it sounds shady? It's perfectly legal—and happening already. In 2009, a Quebec woman who was receiving sick leave for depression had her disability benefits revoked after her insurance company discovered photos on Facebook—her profile was public—where she looked like she was having fun. At the time, a spokesperson for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association told reporters that such information is fair game. Credit-card companies use social media to determine what kind of offers might work the best on your social group—or to get insight on whether you'd default on a loan. Ultimately, it's safe to assume that every Web site you visit -- yep, that means NEWSWEEK, too -- reserves the right to install tracking technology on your computer, eating up information about your tastes, guilty pleasures, and everything in between. Each company can then decide where that trove of data ultimately ends up—and, for data gold mines like Facebook, there's very little incentive to keep it to themselves. “It's not only Global 2000 and Fortune 2000 companies who want this information,” says Michael Fertik, the founder and CEO of ReputationDefender. “Eventually, it's going to be every person in your life.” The ultimate paradox? It doesn't matter if the information is wrong—or, in my case, comically incomplete.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/22/forget-privacy-what-the-internet-knows-about-you.html
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10 Ways to Protect Your Privacy Online
by Michael Fertik
Newsweek Magazine
October 22, 2010
Up until a couple of years ago, I used to say that the average person could protect his or her privacy on the Web. Even as the founder of an online reputation-management company, ReputationDefender, I believed it was possible—so long as you were willing to commit some time to doing it. Today, I tell people this: the landscape of personal data mining and exploitation is shifting faster than ever; trying to protect your online privacy alone is like trying to build your own antivirus software—really, really difficult. But whether or not you have the time (or money) to invest in the pros, there are a few simple steps we can all take to reduce the risk to our private data.
1. Block cookies on your Web browser.
When you surf, hundreds of data points are being collected by the sites you visit. These data get mashed together to form an integral part of your “digital profile,” which is then sold without your consent to companies around the world. By blocking cookies, you'll prevent some of the data collection about you. Yes, you'll have to enter passwords more often, but it's a smarter way to surf.
2. Don't put your full birth date on your social-networking profiles.
Identity thieves use birth dates as cornerstones of their craft. If you want your friends to know your birthday, try just the month and day, and leave off the year.
3. Don't download Facebook apps from outside the United States.
Apps on social networks can access huge amounts of personal information. Some unscrupulous or careless entities collect lots of data and then lose, abuse, or sell them. If the app maker is in the U.S., it's probably safer, and at least you have recourse if something should ever go wrong.
4. Use multiple usernames and passwords.
Keep your usernames and passwords for social networks, online banking, e-mail, and online shopping all separate. Having distinct passwords is not enough nowadays: if you have the same username across different Web sites, your entire romantic, personal, professional, and e-commerce life can be mapped and re-created with some simple algorithms. It's happened before.
5. Know how much private data are out there about you.
Most people aren't even aware of how much information can be found about them with a few clicks. Check out this free service to get a quick read on some of the information that can be found about you and your family.
6. Be really cautious about geo-location services.
Smart phones, apps, and Web services are frequently tagging your location as you move through life. We don't yet know the full privacy implications of these services, and we may not know for some time. For now, be thoughtful about how you use “I just checked in at Restaurant XYZ” features. And if you don't know what geo-location is, turn it off on your phone right away. As a first rule, we usually shouldn't let third parties collect info about us without our even knowing what kind of info is being collected or how.
7. Shred.
If you're going to throw away credit-card offers, bank statements, or anything else that might come in hard copy to your house, rip them up into tiny bits first.
8. Opt out of “people search” sites.
There are many sites across the Web where our personal data are stored, copied, aggregated, and resold. Remove yourself from as many as you can.
9. Max out your privacy settings on social networks.
Privacy settings are getting harder to fix all the time. Stay on top of them. For Facebook, here's a free service that will fix your privacy settings in two clicks.
10. Close old accounts.
If you no longer use Friendster or MySpace, shut down your old account. Doing a digital data wipe from time to time is a good way to reduce the amount of old info floating around in the ether. Reducing your digital footprint will reduce the risk that your digital profile is being built, catalogued, and exploited.
Michael Fertik is the CEO and founder of ReputationDefender. |
