Hello all,

 As my first post, I just wanted to give a little background.  I am currently a MBA student working in Web Strategy in California for the summer before finishing off my last year back at Purdue University.  I am starting this blog to track my way through security of information from the business stand point particularly on the web.  I’m doing an independent study on the subject. 

 I want to start off a little bit with a little talk about Facebook.  I have been reading a post by Tim O’Reilly on O’Reilly Radar entitled Facebook is the Microsoft Office of Social Apps.  The discussion has ranged from saying it is the Office, Windows and Photoshop of Social applications.  There have also been comments about the “so called privacy” that Facebook extends to its users. Mairead commented.

There’s something very unhealthy about talking about “privacy” while freely handing over massive amounts of personal information to a faceless, utterly self-interested corporation. On what planet can that possibly be construed as having anything positive to do with privacy!?!

I would like to respond to this.  Yes, Facebook is handing massive amounts of personal information and yes, they are a self-interested corporation.  However, all self-interested corporations know what keeps them successful and one of Facebook’s competitive advantages is the privacy they give users.  If they mess with that too much, they loose market share and loyal customers.  Consider what happened when they added the News Feeds.  There was a huge outcry about the new features.  The company had to scramble to implement all the privacy features people found necessary. 

Another thought is that in this day and age, more and more information is being held remotely.  Your email, your photos, your health information.  Most people are not in possession of alot of information they believe is private.  Keeping the only copy of your private information yourself is not efficient in any way you think about it.  It is necessary for the information to be out in the world, held by someone else in order for us to be able to go about our normal lives.

Your privacy is held by business.  Your doctor runs a business.  Email servers are owned by a business.  They know that privacy is part of their survival.  When business starts to forget this from time to time, as consumers in this world, we have to be the watchguards that remind business of this fact. 

I’d love to hear everyone’s view on this.