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Google Street Map and privacy concerns

Google Street Maps has been received with mixed responses. On one hand folks are furious about privacy issues, while others  hold that this is not really a problem. I think the truth is probably, somewhere in the middle. Privacy as it existed before the Internet is literally non-existent today. For example, you'll be amazed by the number of "confidential- in company use only" presentations you would find on the web and the "for fee " services that will offer you all kinds of information. In fact, googling someone is standard practice before a business or even social meeting. Academics check out each other's scholarly standing by a quick search on Google Scholar and act appropriately because Google Scholar tells you the academic pecking order, in no uncertain terms! But then, I am somewhat biased about the possibilities of the Internet. I am, perhaps overly, optimistic that more good than harm will come out of products like Google Street Maps. Given that everything is public, one needs to be comfortable with one's behavior,actions and even intentions because all of these can be tracked and shared ,pretty easily. The other alternative is to appropriately change ones behavior,actions and intentions lest it show up on YouTube, complete with audio- which is worse that Google Street Maps!

Michael Richards: from privacy to Internet broadcast

The discussion about on line privacy and data security has been so far restricted to the question of your personal data being hacked and someone stealing your identity. This can result in a host of problems which can be quite severe but can be potentially corrected. A whole bunch of things can be done to protect against this kind of problem. These include shopping on well known websites, watching your credit report, destroying credit offers, going through your credit card bills and so on.

At the other end of the spectrum is Michael Richards who immortalized Kramer in Seinfeld. I am a huge Seinfeld fan but quite frankly I did not get the same buzz I always got watching Kramer make the usual "Kramer"  entry in a re-run last night. This has to do not so much with what Richards actually said in the comedy club but the fact that one could watch the real  video on I think tmz.com. I will not link the video because I think the whole thing is just too painful. All this raises the question of privacy at the other extreme as Steven Levy writes in Newsweek.  He mentions the Bank of America video that I had blogged about.

This whole "net star" kind of thing is indeed the new frontier of the whole privacy and Internet question. You can never assume that an audience you are speaking to is only listening or watching. The whole world might watch ! The PR,advertising and communication world has now an entirely new "public" to handle ! This is peer to peer , depends on buzz and is pretty largely volunteer driven. And it spreads like well -" wildfire" !

Trust,Privacy and Web Science

I recently asked a college freshman about which email account he uses with friends. Apparently most of the freshman's friends use some chatting feature in Facebook and don't normally send email but like using AOL chat occasionally. However  college students country wide are quite cut up that everyone (prospective employers included ) can now open an account on "Facebook" without being in academia. This is an "invasion of privacy" fumed  several students...

What is privacy and how does trust operate on the web ? This is the subject that is finally finding priority among the Computer Science academic community. In fact, the inventor of the World Wide Web  Tim Berners-Lee is heading up this project  and computer scientists are in general recognizing that the web has both engineering and social dimensions. The literally exploding nature of social networks on the web including Facebook, MySpace, the social bookmarks manager del.icio.us and for that matter Wikipedia  are bringing together people like never before. They are delighted to leave  free and correct advise on web forums and blogs (I recently fixed my misbehaving garage door opener by searching for answers on garage door forums  ) and formal innovation management has barely started noticing...... these are really exciting times and I am glad that an whole community of marketing scholars had started work on this consumer trust thing before the dot com problems of 2001. In fact, one of my papers that identifies "trust" as an important driver of online buying behavior finally got published in 2006.

Now that the leading computer scientists have started explicitly recognizing the societal and human aspects of computer science the new interdisciplinary "web science" should start catching on.

Consumer Data Privacy and British Channel 4 TV Sting Operation

At a recent talk at the North East Supply Chain Conference on Global Sourcing  (I will report with photos of this great conference at Marlborough MA soon), the audience had a great deal of interest in the privacy and IP protection regime and culture in India. I emphasized India's democracy and free media. Quite simply no other low cost country in both English speaking and so raucously democratic. You" see what you get" in India and you do have the option of going to the media who will willingly lap up your story - if your story  has any elements of interest.

But since all this probably wastes time for managers and the media needs to generate stories Indian media frequently has "sting" operations. However, I was a bit surprised that Britain's Channel 4 ran a "sting" operation where an individual offered to get customer data through call centers and then aired the "sting" on British TV. Two important points are of interest- first that the British Television Channel was allowed to operate a "sting" operation in India- many countries would not allow such "sting" operations. Secondly, the TV station did not choose to involve local police as media "sting" operations should (as in the US). Despite this the apex association NASSCOM chief has assured that the guilty will be booked- if the particular individual can be traced.

Going by the enormous number of "phishing" emails and very targeted junk snail mail and junk phone calls- I cannot believe that any data is really private whether or not call centers are overseas. In fact, Indian kids see call center jobs as a career and frequently have college degrees unlike the "McDonald" type status and hourly wage call center worker in the developed world.  Frankly, a real call center worker in India has just too much to loose compared to her/his western counterpart. It is not only a career and livelihood but major social disgrace in a very social and contextual culture. I would therefore tend to feel that data is probably more secure in India both because of the social context of the call center worker and the likelihood of real crooks getting hold of the data. Crooks would really have to fiddle around with data in Indian call center customer countries and because of good repatriation treaties between India and customer countries- we can expect some effective deterrence.  This customer privacy question , will however continue to alarm sourcers and would need good management and the implementation stage of different projects.