Webtivity Internet Marketing Blog

The whole premise of social media is to meet people you may never have otherwise met.   It can open business opportunities, introduce you to people all over the world, and perhaps help you meet your future spouse.  It can also open you to significant risk.

Think about your Facebook page or other favorite social media channel of choice.  I bet you’ve exposed lots of sensitive information over time and didn’t even realize it.  You provide personal information right in your profile:  the town where you grew up; where you went to high school/college; your birthday.  Beyond your profile, what pictures have you posted in your social media accounts, and what kind of information do you share about yourself?  Do you root for your favorite sports teams?  Did you upload pictures of your first car?  Do you talk about the first job you ever had?

Now think about the “security questions” you’ve been asked by a website (say, your online banking website) when creating your profile.  These are the Challenge Questions they ask to allow you access into your account if you forgot your password.  In what town did you grow up?  Where did you go to college?  Your favorite sports team?  Your first car?  Your first job? 

Sound familiar?  Are you getting a sinking feeling yet?  You should be. 

With your email address and the information you freely shared on the web, someone can fairly easily get access to some pretty sensitive accounts.  That’s why security experts have been shaking their heads about Facebook’s Social Graph.  It is a phisher’s dream.

So how do you combat it?  You can close down every social media account and never share another thing about yourself online ever again.  But that’s probably not very practical.  So here’s an alternative that can actually be a little fun:  create an alter ego.  Write a whole new life story about yourself.  Maybe you were born in Bermuda and your first job was as a barber pole painter.  Your first pet was a salamander named Gustav and your first car was a 1957 BMW 507.  See how you can have some fun with it?

Now, when websites ask you to complete your Challenge Questions, answer them with your alter ego answers instead of answering them honestly.  Obviously you never want to share your alter ego story with anyone or you’re defeating the purpose.  And don’t forget the old adage about dishonesty:  when you lie you have to remember what you said!

Helpful? or Diversity Suppressor?

Search engines and social platforms have been stridently moving toward a “recommendation engine” model over the past several years.  That means they track past behavior and try to figure out what information to serve to you based on that past behavior.  In other words, instead of giving you a ‘true’ set of results based on their algorithm, you’re provided with a set of results based on what they think you want because of what you and others have done in the past.

How do you feel about that?

In order to provide recommendations based on your past behavior, that means Google, Facebook, and other platforms using this model must store data about your past online behavior.  Searches you’ve done, websites you’ve visited, how long you’ve stayed there, etc.  Privacy advocates aren’t too happy about that, but the companies in question promise the data is stored without identifiable information attached. 

But beyond privacy, what do you think about the fact that results are based on your past behavior?  This model assumes that your tastes will never evolve, and assumes they can predict what you would like. 

I don’t know about you, but I have a diverse set of tastes.  When I go my favorite restaurant (we’ll call this restaurant ‘Google’) I may have a favorite menu item, but I may want to try different things on the menu just for the sake of trying something new.  But if the restaurant staff immediately serves me Two Friends Panang every time I walk through the door, I won’t have a chance to be exposed to other things on their menu.  Other things I may like better.

Even worse, what if my favorite waitress (we’ll call her ‘Facebook’) forced me to eat what she wanted me to eat every time I came to the restaurant?  I’m pretty sure I would build up some resentment over time.  I don’t like people making decisions for me. 

So while I understand the need for fancy algorithms to aid us in accessing the volumes of information we seek every day, do we need all these “personalization” algorithms?  And anyway, can you fancy schmancy programmers really guess what I want?  Am I that predictable?  When I log onto iTunes and see the ridiculous suggestions displayed by their Genius, the answer is a resounding “no”.