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Posts Tagged ‘Privacy Concerns’

While Facebook & Twitter Sit on Sidelines, MySpace Jumps Into Bulk User Data Sales

MySpace has taken a bold step and put a large quantity of bulk user data up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis.

This user data is intended for crunching by everyone from academic researchers to music industry information scientists. Will people buy the data and make interesting use of it? Will MySpace users be ok with that? Is this something Facebook and Twitter ought to do? The MySpace announcement raises a number of interesting questions.

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The 22 sets of data being made available are cheap. Prices range from $10 for raw dumps from the MySpace API to $300 for everything broken out by latitude and longitude. Subsequently derived data sets can be put on sale by InfoChimps users as well, with a revenue split.

Analysis coming from the data could include things like music trends per zipcode, popular URLs being shared, etc.

MySpace is generally thought of as a social network on the decline, but if it is able to position itself as the place to do music still then its hundreds of millions of users could remain engaged. Will data scientists want this data, though? Time will tell, but MySpace has long done cooler things with data than competitors Facebook and Twitter and people haven’t gotten terribly excited about it yet.

Related: See today’s coverage of the cancelation of the Netflix Challenge due to privacy concerns.

Bulk user data has tremendous analytical potential and both Facebook and Twitter have thrown the breaks on 3rd parties offering up their user data more than once. We covered InfoChimps’ offering of bulk Twitter data in depth this Fall, but the marketplace quietly removed that data after Twitter asked them to “wait” for a second time.

In February we profiled Pete Warden (The Man Who Looked Into Facebook’s Soul), a developer who planned on putting a huge pile of Facebook user data online for academic analysis. As we wrote in that article:

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public.

Days later Facebook contacted Warden days later and asked him to hold off on release of that data as well. Last week Warden posted open source code for harvesting the same type of bulk user data from Google Profiles, so the game’s not up yet, not by a long shot.

Why is this kind of big data interesting? This rational may be less applicable in the case of MySpace given its focus on music, or it may be more applicable given the allegedly poorer user demographics on the site compared to Facebook, but here’s how I explained my interest in big social network data analysis in general, as part of a discussion about an excellent special report on big data in the Economist this month.

I think in big data there lies a lot of hidden patterns that represent both opportunities for action and for reflection. At RWW we’re working on trying to find ways to mine data to find news first (we’ve got some interesting methods employed already) and personally, I think the world is an awfully unfair mess and I’m hoping that data analysis will help illuminate some of the hows and the whys. Like the way that real-estate redlining was exposed back in the day by cross referencing census data around racial demographics and housing loan data. That illuminated systematic discrimination against black families in applying for home loans in certain parts of town. So too I think we’ll find a lot of undeniable proof of injustices and clues for how we might deal with them in big data today.

What will we see come out of MySpace’s bulk data? What could we see come from Facebook and Twitter data if only they would let people get their hands on it? Time will tell.

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In Hindsight: When VC Associates Misread the Landscape

When a startup entrepreneur tells the story of his/her mistakes and how they’ve corrected them, it’s endearing. When an investment associate for one of the more prestigious VC firms does it, it’s surprising.

Union Square Ventures’ Andrew Parker recently started a Got It Wrong Series on his Gong Show blog where he identifies his own mistakes and mis-judgements about the industry.

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While investment analysts and associates don’t directly control the money in the VC world, a large number of our readers believe associates help drive the decision-making process. When someone like Parker decides to air his mistakes for all to see, he’s giving us a glimpse at the information that guides the future of the tech landscape and whether or not the funding will follow. Some of Parker’s mistakes have included:

1. Privacy: Parker was adamant about user privacy and assumed that others were the same. He watched as personal finance site Mint, Loopt and Twitter gained ground despite the expectation that privacy concerns would prove to be a bigger barrier to adoption.

2. Mobile Browsers: In 2006 Parker told investor Fred Wilson that he did not expect the mobile browsing experience to catch up to the laptop in the next 5 years. He believed that the form factor of handheld devices was to small to make it easy to reformat pages on the fly, design mobile web pages and zoom into regular pages. Parker admits he was proven wrong by the iPhone.

3. Taste-maker Risk: Parker explains that certain sites succeed on the ability to popularize content from taste-makers. When he first saw the Huffington Post close a $5 million dollar round he was unsure of the investment thesis. Says Parker, “In hindsight, I think I have a blind spot when it comes to first-party content and editorial choices in web services.  The taste-maker risk is a risk, but it’s not nearly as important as I thought it was, and additionally, it’s a risk that smart technologists can navigate well.”

To keep an eye on the series visit Thegongshow.tumblr.com.

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Google Buzz Abandons Auto-Following Amid Privacy Concerns

As we noted this morning, Google isn’t wasting any time in responding to user criticism about Buzz.  Now they’ve rolled out another set of changes to further address Buzz’s privacy issues. The biggest change involves the automatic follow system: it’s now being switched to a suggestion model, where Google will present you with a list of friends it thinks you’d like to follow, but gives you a chance to deselect them before you start using the service.

That’s a pretty big change — when Buzz launched four days ago, one of its selling points was that it took no work on the user’s part to get started, because Buzz would automatically follow the people you interact with most on Gmail. Of course, that isn’t always a good thing — there are plenty of cases when you wouldn’t want people to know who you’d been communicating with. After an initial backlash Google made it easier to hide which users you were following, but now they’re ditching the auto-follow model entirely. Fortunately it only takes a minute to go through the suggestions, so it’s not much of a hurdle.

New users will see a screen like the one above, and Google’s post says that existing Buzz users will be shown a version of this friend selection screen in the next few weeks to confirm that they’re comfortable with everyone they’re following. The service is also going to stop automatically connecting Google Reader and Picasa albums to Buzz accounts, though those options will still be available.

Finally, Google is adding a Buzz section to Gmail’s Settings. Why this wasn’t there from the start is beyond me — before now, if you wanted to adjust your Buzz settings you had to go to your Google account page, which made very little sense because most people use Buzz from Gmail.

Earlier today, Google made yet another change to Buzz’s privacy settings by fixing a bug that could cause users to inadvertently expose their friends’ private settings.

All of these are good changes for Buzz, and I’m optimistic about its future, but I can’t help but wonder how they all made it through months of internal testing.

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Google Buzz Privacy Update Has Users Seeing Stars (Instead Of Your Friend’s Private Email Address)

Google Buzz launched with more than its fair share of privacy issues, leading to a significant backlash from some users. Fortunately the Buzz team is fixing these issues at a brisk pace. Today, they’ve rolled out a fix to a bug that would let users inadvertently expose their friends’ private email addresses using Buzz’s @reply system. Now, instead of sharing these private email addresses with the public, Buzz will simply show everyone a series of asterisks.

The bug stemmed from the way Buzz handles @replies. To send a message to someone you do it using their Email address, and Buzz makes this easy by showing an autocomplete box as you start typing their name. Unfortunately if you happened to pick an Email address that wasn’t associated with a Google Profile (which is quite easy to do given how many people use multiple accounts), Buzz would expose that Email address to the world.

Earlier this week Google helped allay privacy concerns with some other changes to Buzz, including a more prominent option to hide your follower lists (which could be used to figure out who you frequently exchange emails with).

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Mozilla exec urges Firefox users ditch Google for Bing

Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s director of community development, used his personal blog to urge Firefox users away from Google and to use Microsoft’s search engine Bing, instead. Dotzler cited privacy concerns, specifically pointing to comments recently made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“I think judgment matters,” said Schmidt. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Dotzler then links to the Bing add-on for Firefox, stating that Bing’s privacy policy is better than Google’s (and notably fails to mention Yahoo at all).

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More Trouble for File Sharing: Virgin to Monitor in UK

Virgin Media, one of the UK’s leading providers of television / broadband / mobile / phone services, has announced plans to use deep packet inspection technology to track illegal file-sharing activity among around 40 percent of its UK users. Users whose activities are being monitored will not be informed of this fact.

The tech comes from Detica, a company better known for working with government data and intelligence agencies than media files and P2P networks. Their CView product is designed to help put an end to illegal filesharing, and with ISPs showing interest, it’s unlikely that Virgin’s deal will be the last we hear about.

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In a lengthy document on illegal filesharing, Detica outlines how CView can be used to baseline the level of illicit filesharing then continue to measure the same activity as punitive measures are rolled out. The company believes that every ISP has an obligation to reduce illegal filesharing “by an agreed percentage over a period of time,” a goal that can only be achieved through accurate, thorough measurement of user activity – this is the very reason Detica created CView.

Beyond measuring user activity on P2P networks, CView will not collect data on individual users. Raw traffic data and identification information is reportedly deleted in the closed system and cannot be accessed by a human operator. CView gathers data on peer-to-peer packets in user traffic and then inspects the packets to see whether the content is being shared illegally.

Although the tech only examines aggregate traffic data, and although a Virgin spokeperson states that records will not be maintained on individual users, privacy concerns are right behind raining-on-our-parade concerns when one examines the question of monitoring user behavior. Isn’t warning, fining, censoring and/or restricting access for infringing users the next logical step?

Give us your doomsday scenario – or your vote of confidence for the Detica/Virgin partnership – in the comments.

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More Trouble for File Sharing: Virgin to Monitor Filesharing in UK

Virgin Media, one of the UK’s leading providers of television/broadband/mobile/phone services, has announced plans to use deep packet inspection technology to track illegal file-sharing activity among around 40 percent of its UK users. Users whose activities are being monitored will not be informed of this fact.

The tech comes from Detica, a company better known for working with government data and intelligence agencies than media files and P2P networks. Their CView product is designed to help put an end to illegal filesharing, and with ISPs showing interest, it’s unlikely that Virgin’s deal will be the last we hear about.

Sponsor

In a lengthy document on illegal filesharing, Detica outlines how CView can be used to baseline the level of illicit filesharing then continue to measure the same activity as punitive measures are rolled out. The company believes that every ISP has an obligation to reduce illegal filesharing “by an agreed percentage over a period of time,” a goal that can only be achieved through accurate, thorough measurement of user activity – this is the very reason Detica created CView.

Beyond measuring user activity on P2P networks, CView will not collect data on individual users. Raw traffic data and identification information is reportedly deleted in the closed system and cannot be accessed by a human operator. CView gathers data on peer-to-peer packets in user traffic and then inspects the packets to see whether the content is being shared illegally.

Although the tech only examines aggregate traffic data, and although a Virgin spokeperson states that records will not be maintained on individual users, privacy concerns are right behind raining-on-our-parade concerns when one examines the question of monitoring user behavior. Isn’t warning, fining, censoring and/or restricting access for infringing users the next logical step?

Give us your doomsday scenario – or your vote of confidence for the Detica/Virgin partnership – in the comments.

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Think Tank Study Shows Top Web Trends Are Security Risks

Mobile technology, virtualization, the social web, cloud computing – a think tank study has all our good friends on a hit list.

The study, which shows primary security and privacy concerns of U.S. government IT leaders, is making the rounds among military and government bloggers. Policy makers are being told that the applications we know and love are dangerous and pose gaping security loopholes for cyberterrorism. Is a Big Brother overprotective meltdown? Or are our advances really causing greater risks for all users?

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The infosec-focused Ponemon Institute polled 217 senior-level IT executives located in various federal organizations. They called out these as the top 5 trends in Internet technologies that – at least from their POVs – put businesses, governments, and users at risk:

1. 79% Unstructured data
2. 71% Cyber terrorism
3. 63% Mobility
4. 52% Web 2.0
5. 44% Virtualization

Some of these trends are quite longstanding; however, they still cause a great deal of concern among our friends in infosec. Data breach (40%), cyber crime (40%), cloud computing (39%), outsourcing (34%) and open source applications (18%) also top the study’s list of security vulnerabilities as seen through the eyes of government IT pros.

However, Vivek Kundra, a 2.0 champion and federal CIO, said in a recent post, “Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology…

‘This technology supports every mission our government performs – from defending our borders to protecting the environment. IT is essential for the government to do its work, and it is essential that we have access to the latest and most innovative technologies.”

It’s sad and frightening to see mobile tech, social networks, and cloud computing called out alongside cyber crime and cyberterrorism as perceived threats to data security. But how much validity do U.S. leaders’ fears carry?

The Ponemon Institute reports, “IT operations and IT security professionals identified cloud computing, outsourcing of sensitive information to third parties, external threat of
organized cyber criminal syndicates, cyber terrorism, and a mobile workforce… We believe the findings from this study provide government organizations with guidance on which threats are more critical than others to address.”

What do you think about the assessment of these high-profile and popular trends being identified as threats by IT execs in government? Is this a case of out-of-touch government bigwigs cracking down on the social web when black hat hackers are truly to blame? Or are so-called social media experts remiss in their duties to ensure that any products they roll out are secure enough for across-the-board use?

Or is it a little bit of both?

Most importantly, how do we solve the problem of ensuring that government and corporate sensitive information remains secure while users get to enjoy the benefits of Internet-based applications?

We welcome your comments below.

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