Pew looks at Privacy
Cliff December 17th, 2007
Yesterday the Pew Internet & American Life Project published Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency. Although the initial numbers are fascinating (43% of online adults “neither worry about their personal information nor take steps to limit the amount of information that can be found out about them online), it is the narratives that pique my interest. Individual stories tell of how our activities online are recorded, aggregated, mined and used (and in many cases, with our consent and blessing). All of this transparency is adding more value to the information out there on the Web. As the report says, “People are not just findable, they are knowable.”
Those of us who are already active in Web 2.0 know about how changes to profiles, blogs & photostreams are recorded for all eternity (unless you take serious effort to remove it from the public record). The concept of privacy is giving way to the concept of online identity management; it’s not about whether there’s information about you online, it’s about who controls that information. Your address, phone number, and employer are all likely available on the open Web, but you have the ability to control whether your profile is visible to non-Friends.
So where does this lead libraries? Will we offer our users the ability to control their own information, or will we continue to destroy all records in the name of privacy? If users are willing to share what they read on other websites, should we allow them to do so via our catalogs?