Most people have probably heard about the new stuff that Facebook implemented today, primarily since it seems everyone is talking out about it. I think it's rather funny how much it's freaked out people. Like they said in their blog entry about it, the information was already available. Yea, they made it so you don't have to go into as many places to find it, but they've had the API where anyone could compile the data already, and there you don't even get to remove your entries. Yea they could use a few more preferences to change display options (hide stuff from the feed you don't care about), but I think the changes are useful since you don't have to waste as much time on the site to see if anyone posted anything interesting - just spend 15 seconds looking at the feed.
I'm starting to think this is good if people get freaked out about this. Before I always figured they just didn't care about giving the information to everyone. It seems that people just really pay that little attention to the world around them and don't realize people could already track it all?
On the topic of public data, I wonder how many people realize the possibilities of data profiling. Like re-identification of people based on the movies they mentioned in a pseudonymous online forum (he also has other stuff that looks interesting on his site). I think most people these days would freak out about that being possible, but when Schneier mentioned it, his readers realize it's not a new idea. People unfortunately do the bare minimum amount of thinking way too often these days...
Ha, it turns out, some of the language they use in the notes gets funny.
Screenshot
On a side note, mistyping my domain as "mhren" takes you to a Muslim Human Rights Education Network. Oops.
That ranks up there with "3.7% of Bethel MN reads the Bible".
As for mhren, I wonder how much traffic you get from typos the other way.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
Yeah, I thought it was cool. I agree that it is strange people are weirded out by it... people seem to be scared of all the wrong things about technology: mainly whatever they are told to be scared of.
Someone, somewhere makes a ruckus about personal data, so we have to be scared of that. Malware is a threat, but no one notices until after a worm knocks out the school network. Those that do care listen when AOL tells them it protects them from spyware and viruses.
Privacy issues were a large part of the Perspectives course. I found that people are really timid when it comes to someone gathering data about them. I never quite understood that... most of the data is public or something we agree to share. :P