Social media is firmly entrenched in our society, both in our professional and personal lives. The way we communicate with each other has changed because of these tools. Understanding what content to share and how the information flows through your network is a critical step in addressing privacy concerns. Old privacy concerns are no longer valid and you may be unintentionally exposing yourself, your family and friends. This presentation is designed to provide information and frank discussion about the privacy issues surrounding social media. In addition, recommendations for corporate social media policies and the role of IT in social media will be addressed. Presented in first quarter 2012 as the Education Across the Nation (EDxN) series for the Australian Computer Society.

1. Social Media
and Privacy
Sarah Mitchell

2. Goal
for Tonight
 What is Social Media?
 What is Privacy?
 Changes in social norms
 How data is collected about you
 What you can do to maintain your privacy

3. Big Brother meet Mark Zuckerberg
Written in 1949 Launched in 2004
Pervasive government Facebook's mission is to give people
the power to share
surveillance and make the world more
open and connected.

4. What is Social Media?
Online tools designed to connect people with
common interests including:
 LinkedIn
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Blogs
 YouTube
 FourSquare
 Flickr

5. Australians
Online 2009
use the subscribe subscribe
Internet to to
Broadband Internet
service service
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features50Jun+2011

6. http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-january-2012/

7. Paradigm Shift in
Social Norms
We
Assume: But Online:
Conversations are Conversations are
private and only public by default and
made public when you have to work to
we take action make them private

8. What is Privacy?
“Privacy
isn’t about controlling
functional access to content as
much as knowing what to share
when and how it will flow.”
Danah Boyd
32nd International Conference
of Data Protection and
Privacy Commissioners

9. The Pull
of the Social Network

10. The comfort
of strangers
1. Most social networks have no way to
qualify friendships. If they do, they’re
ineffective or rarely used.
2. We’re much more relaxed about strangers
in an online environment than we are
in person.
3. Social networks provide a game-like
atmosphere where collecting friends
and building big followings is desirable.
Alexander Korth, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/on_privacy_in_social_networks_what_drives_users.php

11. Be aware
 Social Media is
designed to encourage
people to abandon
privacy. We’re MORE
reserved in person.
 We connect with
people we don’t know
and we do it often
 It’s immediate;
everyone has devices
and networks
Image courtesy of Miss Karen at Flickr.com

12. Your Information
is Networked
 Social Media is considered
part of the public domain
 Over 90% of recruiters
used social media tools to
screen candidates
 Journalists scour
Facebook whenever
they need a photo
Image courtesy of fredcavazza at Flickr.com

13. It’s not
Big Brother
you should be
worrying about -
It’s your
family, friends
and colleagues

14. You’re being
exposed in new ways

15. In many
different forums

16. There is
no privacy!
“It’s highly likely that if you have
had a public profile or website that
has publicly accessible data, it’s
been indexed and identified by
someone.” tribalytic.com

17. “We don’t have developed
laws of individual
privacy in Australia.”
Michael Lishman,
Partner at Clifford Chance
24 May 2011, AICD Emerging
Director Briefing: Risk and
Reputation Management

18. What on earth is
WOEID?

19. WOEID
Where on Earth ID (WOEID)
describes your location in a
more friendly way than
longitude/latitude coordinates

20. How is WOEID
determined?
 GPS coordinates from
your mobile phone,
computer, car or any
other GPS device
 Geo tags derived from
user profiles like
www.trendsmap.com
 Your time zone

21. How is WOEID
determined?
 Placemaker from Yahoo –
Free geoparsing Web service
for feeds, web pages, news,
status updates
 Language identifier
 Text Mining – What you’re
talking about in your social
media activity Image courtesy of Smart Stylist on Flickr.com

22. How is WOEID
determined?
 FourSquare and other Facebook’s ‘Social Graph’ API
social media tools using
that auto posting feature {
"name": "Facebook Platform",
"type": "page",
 Network theory – "website": "http://developers.facebook.com",
You probably live where "username": "platform", "founded": "May
2007", "company_overview": "Facebook
your network is located Platform enables anyone to build...",
"mission": "To make the web moe open and
social.", "products": "Facebook Application
 Publically available APIs Programming Interface (API)...", "fan_count":
for nearly every social 449921, "id": 19292868552, "category":
"Technology“
media site including }
Facebook and Twitter

23. How is WOEID
determined?
 Your extended
social network:
– Blog
– Facebook
– Twitter
– LinkedIn
– MySpace
 Paid services (online
detective agencies)

24. Social Media is here to stay BUT:
 Your data lives into
perpetuity
 You don’t own the
data once it’s
posted onto the
web
 Privacy policies
change all the time

25. How is WOEID used?

26. Recommendations

27. How to Stem
Privacy Erosion
 Behave as if the world is paying attention – it is
 Turn off GEO tracking on your electronic devices
(don’t forget your car)
 Remove or deactivate social networking accounts
you no longer use
 Refrain from using auto posting features
 Refrain from using cross channel integration
 Become familiar with privacy settings

28. My Personal
Rules
 Don’t post personal photos
of anyone
 Never mention the names of
my family
 Do not discuss where I’m going or
advertise when I’m going to be away
from home
 Don’t reveal my birthdate

29. Social Media is
NOT private
Understanding the flow of data
and the integration between
social networking channels is key
to protecting your privacy.

30. Good
Resources
∗ Privacy Commissioners website (Aus)
www.privacy.gov.au
∗ Privacy Rights website (USA)
www.privacyrights.org
∗ Timothy Lisko (USA), @PrivacyWonk
www.privacywonk.net
∗ Vivenne Storey (Australia), @mysocialpolicy
http://mysocialmedialawyer.wordpress.com/

31. Questions?