A blogger going by the name of Max Klein explains in a recent post, why his readers can’t “friend him” on Facebook because he uses two different Web identities – one for his blog and another for his personal social network:

“I use my other name for everything public and for all business, and that’s why you cannot be friends with me on facebook on my family name. I refuse to lose myself in business, and I refuse to lose myself in my public personality.

Privacy is really more than just having your photos private, it’s about having a place where only people you know, trust and are comfortable with know about and have access to [certain info]…”

At Abine, we’re working hard on the ability to easily create and manage multiple different identities online.  We use the term “identities” not as a fancy technology industry technical concept, but as a way to enable the same kinds of simple privacy boundaries we enjoy in the real world today, online.

You can create unique Web identities that are easy groups of user names, email addresses and other privacy settings.   These can help you keep the different things you do online, the things that get tracked so carefully, more separated, more distinct, and therefore more private.

Most of us use different email addresses for different kinds of sites and services already depending on what kind of relationship we want to have with the site.  Do you have more, better, or different ways to separate who knows what about you online?  Do you have tips, tools, or tricks to share with others?  Please post them as comments and let us all know.

The FT brings up two clear points in an editorial titled Protecting Privacy 1. that data be anonymized and 2. that users give informed consent to be tracked, and their challenge to the advertising industry is to “be more open about their activities.”

There has been and will continue to be lots of debate about how rules and industry standards should evolve when it comes to tracking your digital life, but these have largely occurred without the participation of the public who one might conclude, see little action or consequence emerging from all the talk (unless your iPhone now showing arrows when your location is being shared qualifies as action).

Government and industry are both internally conflicted when it comes to online privacy protection. If left completely to their own devices, they will tend to make many mistakes (as well as to get some things right of course).  How can we avoid many of these mistakes? Simple: users need to be involved in determining the appropriate boundaries for their online privacy.

Bringing users into the problem-solving and solutions building process is one key reason Abine acquired TACO recently.  TACO is precisely the kind of thing that the advertising industry could have done right, but got wrong (likely on purpose).  So users had to do it themselves.  Now, the Network Advertising Initiative is playing catch-up.

At Abine, we believe users care very much about their online privacy, but need simple tools with clear options to empower them to further define what they want to share, when, with who, and for how long.  This is the dialog we are engaging our community in every day.   And from this, rather than from more debates on the Hill, will emerge better solutions for every Internet user.

If you haven’t already, download the Abine Privacy Suite (it’s free), and join a community leading the way to better online privacy through action.

It’s come to light that someone has posted a big dataset of Facebook information – so big it’s over 100,000,000 users.  MSNBC has a story on it here but it’s being widely reported.  A little “inside baseball” shows this is not unique:

1.  A bunch of companies have been doing this for a while now (they’re well ahead of the open source ‘hacker’ crowd).

2.  As some of the articles suggest, changing privacy settings really doesn’t work well retroactively.

Once you put information out on the Web, it’s hard to “erase it” although we have some options if you have accounts or items of data that you want to try and get deleted from the Web.   The best way to protect yourself is not to stop being social or trying to find the most trusted ‘least hackable” sites.

Instead of blindly trusting everything we do to be OK and to be kept reasonably private, we should try to separate the key personal information that links us as unique individuals that are easy to find as people to our usage of sites and services.  That way, you can still use the Web the way you want and have the privacy you expect and deserve.  From your email address to your phone number to your passwords and the trails of history you leave after visiting sites, Abine has lots of ways to help make this easy.   If you haven’t given the Privacy Suite a try yet, you can download it free here.

Are you one of these Facebook users?

500 million users

Today Facebook announced that they now have over 500 million users, and founder Mark Zuckerberg has predicted the site will eventually surpass one billion- that means that one out of every six people in the world will have a profile on the site. 500 million profiles means Facebook is extremely popular, but it also means they have access to an enormous amount of your personal information ranging from birthdays and addresses to interests, job histories, romantic statuses, and sexual orientations.

Newsweek: 10 Ways Facebook Can Ruin Your Life

Yesterday Newsweek, prompted by the site’s approaching membership milestone, wrote an article outlining some of the dangers that this degree of information sharing can bring. Entitled “10 Ways Facebook Can Ruin Your Life,” it includes problems like “2. Your creditors can track you down,” and “4. Your ex can use it against you in a divorce.” Others, like “1. You’ll be reunited with your biological parents” and “5. It could make you depressed” seem less catastrophic, but they’ve managed to dig up some horror stories.

“So what? I’m not in debt/unfaithful/adopted/depressed!”

All in all, you might come away from the article thinking, “yeah, Facebook can be dangerous if I’m not smart about how I use it, but as long as I’m not stupid I’ll be OK.” And that’s where Newsweek misses the point. Facebook photos, wall posts, and other personal information are just begging to be taken out of context; even if you have done nothing wrong you could still get into trouble, especially in cases when you do not have a chance to explain yourself.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

According to the Telegraph article cited by Newsweek, half of British employers turned down job applicants based on the applicants’ Facebook profiles. While in some cases these actions were probably legitimate, it is also quite likely that many of these rejections were based on things like sexual orientation or political affiliation. Worse, those assessments might not even be accurate! Someone whose interests include Fox News and Glenn Beck is not necessarily a political conservative but will undoubtedly be perceived as such by anyone viewing his profile. A picture with a platonic friend can be taken as evidence of infidelity. Sarcastic or facetious comments can be interpreted literally.

What can you do about it?

So, what can you do to protect yourself? The first step is to make sure you don’t have anything incriminating or unflattering on your profile. The second step is to make sure you don’t have anything that anyone could perceive as incriminating or unflattering. Basically, “don’t be stupid” combined with “people make unfair assumptions.” However, if you really want to be completely secure, the only 100% effective solution is to delete your profile completely. Unfortunately, since Facebook makes money by selling advertising, they don’t want you to go. So they make it very confusing to actually delete a profile. Luckily, there are some resources available: Abine’s DeleteMe Service will take care of it for you for a small fee, and a Google search will return plenty of tutorials if you want to do it yourself.

As Facebook passes the half-billion-user mark, take a moment to think about what you’re sharing with them and what they’re sharing with the world. You might decide you care about your privacy a little more than Mark Zuckerberg does.

The unanimous Declaration of the Global Users of the Internet:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for users to dissolve the public identifiers which have connected them with to Web sites and services and to assume the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature entitle them, they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Internet users are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are privacy, control, and the free pursuit of their interests online.

— That to secure these rights, technologies are made available, deriving their just powers from the consent of the users,
— That whenever any Form of  Web Technology becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new technology, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety, Privacy and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Technologies long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that users are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to fight back by abolishing the forms of technology to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Tracking and Control, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Technology, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

— Such has been the patient sufferance of Web users; and such….

- Web companies may not force us to supply our real government-issued credentials if we object to this and their policies of use
- Our confidential data: names, numbers, and passwords are ours and ours alone to control, today, and in the future
- As more of our lives move online, our lives need not be tracked unnecessarily and without our explicit permission.   And if should permission be granted, we may revoke it with respect to our personal identifying information at any time, with any entity, for whatever reason we may choose.

That these united users are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent, that they are Absolved from all obligations impinging on their Rights; and that as Free and Independent users, they have full Power to remain private, to choose not disclose their real information, and to choose to do all other Acts and Things which Independent users may of right do.

Sign this declaration (with any name you prefer!) in the comments section.

Apparently, Michael Arrington thinks so.

In this recent article, Arrington points out that “clones” like IE mimicking Netscape have won success in the market before and social networking is as critical a battlefield for users online time today, than the browser was in years past (remember the “start page” wars etc?).

An Arrington further believes that simple privacy settings can be a big win in any Google clone of Facebook:

There is one area where Google can gain a quick advantage… in truly open data with simple export tools and easy to understand privacy settings. I’d recommend going with the Twitter model on privacy – it’s all public or it’s all private (for approved friends only). It’s not hard to understand, and very few people actually choose the private option.

Whether Google is or isn’t working on such a project, we see little reason why consumers would flock to a “Google version of privacy” vs. Facebooks just because it’s simpler to understand.  Both companies have the same fundamental business model: sell you as consumers to their network of advertisers.   New sites that aim to change that equation are purported to be emerging but it’s very early days.

At Abine, users of the Privacy Suite can, as they are comfortable,  get the best of both worlds – by using existing services but letting them track less of their online activities as easily, and by breaking the links between their personal email addresses and phone numbers, that these sites are storing, using to link to other data, and creating new databases of ever-more-detailed information on all of us.  And if one company can get all this info and use it for good purposes, it’s too easy for a third or forth company to sell it to others for who-knows-what reasons…

Smiling or kicking and screaming, many of  are about to embark on the technology world’s latest experiment in “inter-networking;” the sharing of our locations by default.  And not just with our trusted friends and family.  Because your location is worth a lot of dough to “various parties”.

Just as we’re learning with the concerns over what Facebook wants us to share by default and what info Google has already collected as they drive by and photograph the street where our house is, we (the users of technology) and they (the providers of technology) have different goals when it comes to the protection of privacy.

Our goals are first and foremost safety, and then utility and fun come afterwords.  Of course it’s fun and serendipitous to share information and get connected to a long-lost friend, etc. etc.   But when a stalker such as an ex, or a disgruntled employee can find out too much information about you, and use it against you, the fun doesn’t seem worth the price.   Or if a well-meaning company loses your data to hackers who then find a market for it with anyone who wants to use it?  Not so fun.

As that data begins to get more and more revealing, automatic sharing becomes even riskier.  Your location day by day, hour by hour.   Your medical prescriptions.   Your recent friends.  Now, just start combining them together.  Anyone can find out things we wouldn’t confess to our dearest friends.

Our expectations are that we control our privacy.  Apple things otherwise, as the LA times writes recently:

” Apple Inc. is now collecting the “precise,” “real-time geographic location” of its users’ iPhones, iPads and computers.

In an updated version of its privacy policy, the company added a paragraph noting that once users agree, Apple and unspecified “partners and licensees” may collect and store user location data.”

Can you think of concerns around Apple and other companies having rights to share everywhere you walk and talk?  At Abine, we’re building a company to provide a balance against the incessant tracking and monitoring of your everyday digital life.  Give one of our growing set of tools a test drive.   We won’t ever track where your test drive goes, promise.