Protecting My Lil Twitters
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4am, Sunday October 14th, 2007Comment
Today somebody asked me why I don’t set updates to twitter.com so that only my friends can read them, and I just thought up a satisfactory answer – which a few people I know won’t agree with. Online privacy is nonexistent for me. It always has been, and it’s not a big deal. The fact is that as soon as that message is made semi-public, anybody can actually see it. It doesn’t take much for a friend to show his phone to somebody else, or forward on an email.
The great story I’m reminded of is a Microsoft employee who sent an unpleasant message to a colleague, protected by some feature in MS Office to prevent copying and pasting. The receiver took out his mobile phone, took a picture of the message on the screen and sent it back via MMS. Unfortunately I can’t find a link to back it up, but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere.
As a fantastic side-note, it’s half past four in the morning and I’m in an unfamiliar house, pretty much on my own. My two friends are “occupied”, so I plan on enjoying the morning (after blogging of course, which was the obvious first choice). Hope everyone else got more sleep than I did.
My name’s Alex Muller.
“It doesn’t take much for a friend to show his phone to somebody else, or forward on an email.” Nor in RL does it “take much” … But you wouldn’t, would you?
I see *one* life, threaded through by good sense, trust between friends and respect for the privacy that some want and seek to apply to their online stuff. (Try exposing someone’s posted-as-private material and the response will be swift — and every bit as to the point as a similar abuse of trust in RL. Of course, the other consequences could be far worse.)
Exposure of privacy… I suppose the exposure contained in the post is fitting to the content…