socialmedian: Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open Web

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Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open Web

Submitted by Magitam from Google Reader

Dec 01, 2008

Summary

Today’s the day that Facebook makes their big press push for their Facebook Connect service, which was first announced last May. The NY Times has a story giving a broad overview of Connect as well as competing services from MySpace (Data Availability) and Google (Friend Connect).

All three services are platforms for third party sites (Digg, Twitter, Citisearch, CBS, whatever) to let users sign in via their favorite social network instead of the normal approach. Some profile information flows with the sign in, which the sites can keep for a period of time. And activity that occurs on the site - Twitters written, Digg stories voted on, restaurant reviews on Citisearch, etc.) can optionally flow back to the user’s activity stream.

What the third party sites get out of these services: easy sign in for users, particularly new users. They can also use the profile data to help users create accounts at their site with little data input. The activity stream information published on the social networks includes links back to their sites. And one of the most interesting f

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Comments (5)

Joebachana,

Dec 01, 2008

At the end of the day this is about single sign on (SSO), which is always beneficial. However, the login and password pair should be treated as sacrosanct -- in essence, by some trusted organization whose mandate is at its core to protect core personal data that may travel along with the login/password.

Nowhere can anyone demonstrate to me that either MySpace or Facebook have the core mandate to protect user privacy. In fact, their growing business models may actually prove antithetical to the users core privacy, since these social networks (and others) will continue to build revenues around 3rd party organizations that want access to the networks' user base.

The secondary elephant-in-the-room issue is that social networks may or may not have robust enough security models to even allow for secured and protected data. Any system that allows a user to create a profile with a pets or kid's name as a password is not, in my mind, a secure enough platform. Since both Facebook and MySpace have been hacked frequently enough over the past year alone, I think this is still cause of concern that tens of millions of people may not be adequately aware of as they post personal contact information and pictures of their children as well as connect with people they think they know but who may be Internet predators.

I'm not trying to be the harbinger of gloom and doom here, since I enjoy these and many other social networking platforms. I just think the larger concern with Facebook connect and the like is that people may be making assumptions about how their private data is being protected, when it may not be.

Billso,

Dec 01, 2008

@joebachana, I agree with you. Neither MySpace or Facebook have shown that they are trustworthy SSO providers. It's too tempting for either company to crack open the user databases and do some datamining. I'd rather have third parties, such as OpenID networks, that are dedicated to maintaining user data privacy.

Saxonchap,

Dec 02, 2008

@joebachana I'm with you all the way, but the sad part is, nobody really cares anymore.

Joebachana,

Dec 03, 2008

its not that nobody cares, its that we're fattened by FREE. I saw the movie "Wall-e" with my kids a few months ago. The Earth is utterly destroyed and uninhabitable by humans. The remainder of human life lives on some massive spaceship that resembles a cruise ship. Humans can no longer walk, they are moved around on pods with TVs in front of them and fast food slurpies and burgers always in their hands. They are massively obese and have vacant/vapid looks.

Free is hard to beat, and that may be what you're referring to, Saxonchap, when you say nobody cares. I actually think people DO have that sneaking feeling that they're forfeiting something more valuable than money when they use their gmail, google maps, google reader, youtube, google toolbar, google search, picasa, google face recognition, google android, google CHROME, and so forth. All free. All amazing vast arrays of data that never get deleted and are used to fuel the advertising business of an $80 billion company.

Saxonchap,

Dec 03, 2008

@joebachana For sure, the "free" is a part of it. For many though, and I think this gets worse the younger you move down the age scales, I do believe either ignorance or a care-free attitude plays a huge part. I used to owna couple fo up-scale Internet Cafes in Upstate NY, and to see the usage of patrons, young and old, was quite a revelation!

Yes, most are aware of what an ID and password does, but I think so many don't realise the potential implications of lax security. Perhaps web 3.0/4.0 (for want of a use of a buzzword) will address that - I mean, we've already seen the consolidatiosn towards OpenId etc., and yes, I absolutley agreed with your very first sentence - it's basically SSO. But, were all going to be in trouble when we realise that Big Brother and 1984 has really taken over our lives and it's too late for us to do anything about it, right :)