
Is Making Public Data "More Public" a Privacy Violation? - randomwalker
http://33bits.org/2010/04/05/is-making-public-data-more-public-a-privacy-violation/
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aw3c2
Very interesting topic!

I use random nicknames a lot. For example on Freenode IRC. I then started
talking on different channels and also, without hesitation linked to some of
my personal websites. Now I find IRC logs searching for my websites and
leading from there, that random nickname which of course is not so random
anymore then.

It is a weird thing. You know its public, but you do not expect it to end up
in a search engine. After all it is realtime like a conversation and who would
think of recording (and indexing and publishing!) those. Until now I used IRC
like the real world. You know there are cameras everywhere but you do not
expect to be seen on them.

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code_duck
I've encountered this. A project I worked on was a API site that helped
members of another site track their account milestones, using info gathered
via a public API. Though the information was all public and available without
any authentication, some people felt like it was an invasion or privacy and
that others would use it to 'spy' on them. We could have actually used more
telling and personal info, however, and chose not to - if someone was really
interested in gathering data about another member, they could have done a lot
better than to use our site.

Same principle, anyhow... public data made more accessible was considered a
privacy violation. This does make sense, as lowering the access barrier to
make other people's data attainable quickly and easily has a significant
impact on whether third parties will view it at all.

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frossie
Once again, click through to the referenced Danah Boyd's talk if you haven't
already:

<http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html>

It's a perfect dissection of the Google Buzz issue, which encapsulates this
whole debate.

