When Personal Information is Public Fare

Data Mining and Facebook

Gullibility is an advertiser’s dream. Blogs, forums, and social networking sites turn participators into potential targets.

It amazes me that anyone should think it’s ok to dish out lots of personal information on the Internet, of all places. Maybe these folk aren’t cynical enough. Just in case you’re not aware, the Internet is mainly a huge monitored network shaped by big business to make big money out of small people like you and me.

Imagine there’s a car sitting outside your house. In it sits a bloke with binoculars and a laptop. He’s watching what you do. When you go off to the supermarket to fill your trolley with salt and sugar he follows you around and makes a note of what you buy and spend. He learns about your hobbies, where you like to go for your holidays and what car you drive. And he knows your age and what brand of clothes you wear.

Sometimes I have a look through my site stats to see who has come from where to pay me a visit. The last time I bothered I discovered a company that specialises in snooping. It has spent “tremendous dollars” on an impressively snoopy system. Well, that partly explains why my web pages were trawled. Now, it goes without saying that the owners and employees of this company wouldn’t be keen on using the word snoop to describe what they do. They will call it “data mining” or something like that. But strange to say, that’s not how I see it. I just feel snooped on. So I did some trawling of my own.

This busybody company makes the most of the latest powerful technology to identify and process Internet-based intelligence. All the juicy bits are then passed on to those who are paying for the service. A button gets pressed (ok, it’s possibly more complicated than that) and automatically more than 210 million unique URLs, over 8.2 billion individual pages and over 52 billion links are searched. A powerful meta engine “piggybacks” on over 40 major search engines. This meticulous investigation identifies all instances where brands, companies and their trademarks are referenced.

Online communities are uncovered for particular markets. Site types, “individual profile information” and consumer behaviour are all monitored and thoroughly assessed. Consumer media, blogs, discussion forums and other Internet sources are scanned and relevant details recorded. All this perfectly legal snooping delivers an impressively hefty library of consumer content. Consumers? Oh, that’ll be us lot then. Do we mind? Should we be worried?

Take Facebook as another specific example. I recently watched a TV program that lifted the lid on this giant social networking site. Around 200,000 are signing up every day. Mark Zuckerberg, its creator, who looks like he should be sitting at a school desk bursting pimples, will tell you that Facebook is a simply a clever business venture that sells targeted advertisements.

Facebook has a monumental database of personal information

innocently supplied by the users themselves

Facebook has a monumental database of personal information innocently supplied by the users themselves. Incredibly, countless thousands are unthinkingly sharing their full names, addresses, phone numbers and so on. In fact, many of them reveal so much detail that experts reckon they could easily end up victims of identity theft.

Do you really think young Zuckerberg loses sleep over that? Instead he’s taking targeted advertising to a whole new level. Once agreed to, Facebook’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy (take a look—just 10,000 words) mean that personal information can be passed on to advertisers who target individuals likely to be interested in a particular product. They’ll consider your age, sex, location, hobbies and so on. They want to build up an accurate profile of who you are and what you like. Then the relevant advertising will be in your face, so to speak.

Well, we’re sick of that, so I’ve been doing a bit of thinking. Maybe we all need to fight back. Despite the fact that social networking sites forbid you to “falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself”, wouldn’t it be one in the eye for grasping .com entrepreneurs with bum-fluff on their chins if we all wised-up and created millions of pages littered with concocted, silly details. All that information-gathering and targeted advertising would then be a total waste of time. Imagine the effects of trawling through a global mass of misinformation. Wonderful!

I’m seriously thinking about it, just for individualistic badness. I could pretend I was Darren, a 24-year-old part-time model and trainee hairdresser who likes keeping fit and listening to Celine Dion and Take That. I could say I was into eco-activism and saving polar bears, whales and foxes. Maybe I should help out in a beauty salon in my spare time with my best friend Jason. Stuff like that.

Just think of all the useless advertisements I needn't pay any attention to. Greenpeace’s homepage, posters of Kate Moss, boyband downloads, chest-expanders, hairdryers, and self-help books on pain-free waxing and how to manage my cuticles. Each one would miss the target by the biggest distance imaginable. It would be deeply satisfying.

We need to get the word out. If you’re a member of a social networking site, the next time you’re logged-in, have a careful look through the information you’ve already shared. Don’t be naïve. Delete all the really personal stuff.

Better still, delete everything. Don’t go back. In so doing you’ll keep yourself to yourself and avoid being profiled in Zuckerberg’s electronic dossier.

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