Trying to envision the digital footprint that you leave behind might be a easy for some, as these people might have a very prominent online presence. Maybe they are very vocal on social media sites or have lots of accounts created on different websites? I am not one of those people, this journey of collecting and researching my digital footprint has been more difficult than I imagined, but nevertheless, my findings are as follows.
Public Info
The very fist thing I did, as anyone would if they wanted to know a bit more about themselves, is to google myself. I found the standard search results of: my facebook page, my twitter account, my unfilled Google+ account and some other blog posts from another class scattered about here and there. This didn't really surprise me all that much, as I don't update my status/tweet very often, and as the search results already told you, I haven't even bothered filling out my Google+ account, so there really isn't anything there for anyone to use. I feel like this is a double edged sword. On the one hand there is very little publicly available information about me but the information that's there doesn't fully reflect who I am. I might mediate that in the coming future, but I couldn't care less at the moment.
The next site on the list was Wink, which isn't that much different from pipl. As with pipl, I barely got anything. it returned me my facebook page at least, and said I had to become a member for any more information. There was no way that was happening, so this website also was not even better than your standard google search.
I gave up on these 'deep search' sites completely and tried to see what information facebook provided about me if I logged out. Twitter, Google+ and the previously mentioned blog posts don't really contain any personal information available to the public, so facebook was my only real option. Again, nothing surprising. Just some of my interests were listed, my profile picture and my name (obviously). I tired clicking on various things like 'photos', 'wall' and other buttons, but facebook prompted me to sign up on every click, so I couldn't get past that screen without seeing any more information.
Despite the lack of information on myself, it is sort of unnerving to see that there are several sites maintained for the sole purpose of tracking down people on the Internet. While its great that these services help you connect with past friends and other people you might have known. I can't help but feel as if there is something creepy about the whole thing. It's a sort of safe feeling to know that my own personal information is not just sitting out there for anyone to see. But in order to get a real sense of safety or security, we'll have to investigate into what happens behind closed doors...
Private Info
Knowing 'legalese' helps greatly when trying to figure out what some companies' privacy policies actually mean. Thankfully most of the sites I looked at offered the details mostly in plain English, with clear cut defined goals that they plan to achieve with your personal information.
The first privacy policy I looked at was Blogger's, where would be a better place to start than the very site I am using for this assignment? As with YouTube however, Blogger mainly links to the general Google privacy policy where there are several statements that explain what they track. The information that is tracked is all of the info that is being displayed to you and everything that is clicked on by you when using the Blogger interface. I would guess this is for ironing out interface problems, as to see how people interact with the site when they create a blog (like this one), so it doesn't seem out of place in this policy. The rest of the policy mainly talks about the authentication process but what's more interesting is their policy for deletion of content. They remove the blog from public access but they do warn that: "Because of the way we maintain this service, residual copies of your profile information and other information associated with your account may remain on back-up media." This of course implies that if you happen to have said something you may regret, even though its out of public view, its still on a server somewhere, just waiting to be dug up and found. This may be a fairly large disadvantage for society in general, as an impulsive comment might bring unwanted negative attention even after it's been 'deleted'.
One of the more important privacy policies to look at was the place where I do my online banking. This seemed like a logical next step, because how banks handle their customers' information has a huge impact on their future and ability to live peacefully. TD has not failed to deliver on this front. Most companies usually have one page dedicated to their privacy policies but the bank has several pages and sections explaining exactly what they do with your information, and how to prevent your information from being stolen. While the policy explains exactly what is happening with your personal info, the situation in the case that it doesn't has some fairly huge negative implications for individuals, as theft of this information may ruin somebody's life. However, as we learned in class, the banks have their own secure communication channel with the public, so chances of that situation happening are fairly slim. Even with the assurances though one part did kind of bother me. Specifically: "We may release your information to parties outside TDBFG, such as our suppliers and agents who assist us in serving you. They may be located in Canada or other jurisdictions or countries, and may disclose information in response to valid demands or requests." What is a 'valid demand or request', and how are requests assessed to be 'valid'? This is the only part of the policy I had some doubts in, but other than that it seems that nothing is out of the ordinary.
Another quite interesting privacy policy is of Twitter. They are very quick to remind you, numerous times, that all of your tweets and the meta data associated with your tweets (like location) is shared around the entire world. Not only that but the policy constantly reminds you that any public information you choose to provide and any tweets you make are available instantly to any search engine, and therefore, to the public. These warnings probably reflect past incidents, and incidents talked about in class where people tweet something either recklessly (as in an important political figure gives away his position to possible insurgents) or causing havoc with 'fake' tweets discussed earlier in class. This may be bad news for people with fame, or people who are reckless in their tweeting habits. But in the end, it is up to the end user to be responsible with the service. While twitter does share some initial public information about its users, that information could probably be found on many other services (like Facebook or Google+) as was demonstrated earlier in the post. An interesting thing to note however, is their policy on 'Log Data'. According to twitter, log data is "IP address, browser type, the referring domain, pages visited, your mobile carrier, device and application IDs, and search terms". This seems like they are collecting statistical marketing data, possibly for advertisements and others possibly for tech reasons (like browser type). But the thing that is most interesting about this is that this information could stay on their servers for up to 18 months. Because a lot of this data can be used to identify the user, this reinforces the notion that anything that is put up on the internet tends to not go away very easily, if at all. Twitter users are especially prone to this, as the nature of the service is very impulsive, and easy to be reckless with.
On the larger scale however, most of the privacy policies I read were not that surprising, as most of them tend do either say that they improve the service or do market research with the data they collect. For example for a sales driven service like Steam there are many advantages to collecting information for the individual, the company and the community as a whole. Steam relies on offering deals on digital content (usually games, and add-ons for games) and personal information may give them pointers on how to make future deals better. This benefits both the customer, who is getting lower deals on exactly what they want to buy, and Valve (and subsequently, the developers of the content), as they are generating more sales due to increased accuracy when targeting their market.
