Privacy and the Net

The internet used to be thought of as a new frontier, a new, untamed "wild west" of sorts. The internet offered anonymity, privacy in addition to the functional benefits of staying connected and accessing almost unlimited amounts of information. Of course, this new frontier also introduced new worries. It offered opportunities for scammers to find new prey around the world (who hasn't received those e-mails about a supposed Nigerian billionaire?). The net made disseminating viruses and spam much easier, and it also enabled virtual communities centered on illegal activity to flourish. That was the internet of the 90s. It was anarchical in some says, but if you weren't up to mischief or too naive you probably didn't have much to worry about. But now we have Web 2.0. Now we have MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, Blogger, YouTube and tons of other websites that let users become part of the content creating endeavor.

Web 2.0 is exciting, no doubt about it. It's empowering; it gives voice; it opens up new opportunities for people who have been failed by the conventional route. The new web also helps us keep in touch, make connections, and share information. While we've been quick to harness the opportunities all this provides, I think very few of us were prepared to deal with the repercussions.

Once Google and Yahoo! were curious search engines that existed in the periphery of pop-culture. Today they're full-scale big businesses, traded in the stock market and all, with obligations to turn out profits to their shareholders. While Google, YouTube, and many other exciting Web 2.0 websites began humbly, sometimes in the basements of their very own independent and entrepreneurial creators, they are no longer small and innocuous Little Trains That Could. Recall some recent developments: Google's quarterly gross revenues are well past the billion dollar mark, and its stock price now sits around $450 per share--compare that to the stock prices of other giants (Wal-Mart @ $50 per share, Ford @ $8 per share, Microsoft @ $28 per share) and draw your own conclusions. News Corp, a massive media conglomerate that owns Fox News among others, purchased MySpace in 2005 for $580 million. Just a week or two ago, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

This, my friends, is the incorporation of the internet. Websites that depend upon user participation and collection of user data are turning into massive corporations. But what does it mean when companies can turn our search queries, blog entries, e-mails, and online profiles into huge bucks? Well, looking back on the history of corporations, it probably means we should be worried.

At the same time, as a Blogger user and a Gmail user, two free Google services, I've often been greatly appreciative of what Google has done. I appreciate this blogger platform where I can express myself in an ad-free environment, or with ads if I choose and want to make some money. Gmail is also a wonderful, user-friendly service, which offers tons and tons of storage space. Google also offers GoogleEarth, translations, and tons of other great, free services. By extending so many free services to users around the world without ripping people off, Google probably rightly earns its motto "Don't be Evil." So with so much to be grateful for, it's easy to let our guards down and lose sight of things we ought to be concerned about.

The web has become so deeply integrated into our daily routines that we often fail to think about how our own net activity can be used against us. For example, while we might feel comfortable sharing somewhat private or confidential information in an e-mail with a friend, we often forget that once we send off that e-mail we lose control of it. It could be shared, forwarded along, and ultimately come back to haunt you. Furthermore, we are now beginning to learn that even if your friend, say, deletes that e-mail it still can be retrieved. In fact, forensic scientists are telling us that unless very concerted steps are taken, almost any digital piece of information can be recovered after deletion.

Those are personal minutiae, though. At what point do we start worrying about really losing our privacy? To get at the answer, take, for example, this piece Adam Penenberg penned for Mother Jones about Google. The first two paragraphs alone were enough to make me a little uneasy. As Penenberg describes, Google (and other search engines) track your IP address and your queries. Although that might not be too alarming, it becomes disconcerting when you consider the AOL slip a few months ago when they released a massive database of user search queries that enabled people curious enough to actually decipher the identity of some people whose searches were part of the database.

Consider, also, how Gmail scans your e-mails in order to target ads to you. Very smart scheme, but it didn't stop a privacy brouhaha from erupting over it. Also consider the recent Facebook News Feed debacle. This new option tracked every activity you made on the website (recording what you did and at what time you did it, to the minute), notified your friends about it, and let visitors to your profile track your changes, too. It's not too hard to think of a situation in which you want to go online, but don't want everyone to know about when and what you did. Facebook caved fast, issued an apology, and quickly rolled out new privacy settings. Hats off to them.

But the incorporation of the internet along with its growing grip on our lives means that at some point something irksome will happen again. For many, the sheer volume of personal information that a simple ego search renders is already more than they want publicly available. It seems we've already lost control over that. And with the tracking of almost every single thing we do online, we are increasingly losing control over more aspects of our lives--surrendered to the databases of growing corporations.