Readers of my last post no doubt expected that I would write about HP and Palm next. I applaud the move for reasons I will explain later, but for now I want to talk about something perhaps more important: privacy.
Some people want to share absolutely everything online. The Foursquare satire, Please Rob Me, and heavily funded startup, Blippy, have shown that doing so is not always a good idea. Some Blippy members’ credit and debit card numbers were published to the world in Google search results. The privacy breach continued even after a supposed fix. Whoops.
(Credit card numbers in search results — every webmaster’s worst nightmare and every thief’s dream)
Before you call me a Luddite, I should say that I love social networking sites as long as I retain control over who sees what. Of course Blippy’s problem was due to a lapse in security, but it never would have happened if users had chose not to discard their privacy by volunteering their credit card numbers in the first place. And lest you ask, Blippy is different than a typical eCommerce site because its raison d’être is the overexposure of sharing shopping behavior.
I think there needs to be a little more common sense from consumers and independent analysis in the online industry. It should not require FTC investigations or Congressional oversight, as was suggested after Google Buzz complaints (warning, contains justified profanity). It means the fourth estate doing their job.
For instance, despite the backlash against Google Buzz, initial concerns about Google Social Search have all but disappeared.
