Privacy and the Internet

In a twitter conversation today, the topic of privacy on the internet came up – with someone saying that they wouldn’t want a picture of their 4 month old posted on the internet. I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I fully recognize that I come at this from a different position than a lot of people. Here’s my first thought:

If you still actually believe that you have any kind of “privacy” – especially on the internet – it’s time to wake up!

Privacy is a dead concept. There is literally no way for anyone to keep their lives private in the world we live in. Examples are around us everywhere, most recently with Google Maps Street-Level. The bottom line remains that there is NO such thing as privacy. There are images and recordings taken and posted of almost everything these days. Reports of events are written by bloggers and others on nearly every major event. But more than this kind of information is easily available.

This article about Web 2.0 being “Matrix 2.0″ gives a cursory view of the lack of privacy on the internet, I’m going to show you how to dig deeper using myself as a subject. Before we begin, I want to say up front that I probably have a lot more personal data on the internet than the average person, I’ll talk about that shortly.

So, begining at the begining, let’s Google my name, Phil Burns – we’ll assume from the beginning that all we know is my name and that I live in Utah and that I’m a programmer: The top result for Phil Burns leads to a site (that is mine) called phil801.com. If we go there, the landing page says “to get in touch with me, go to my contact page” by going there, we find my mobile phone number, my email, multiple ways to chat with me and my linked in page. Most importantly, we find that I go by Phil801 on the internet – which is a much more unique identifier. Let’s Google Phil801: The results list, in order:

This blog, my home page, my Twitter page, my Digg page, my Flickr page, my delicious page, my stumbleupon page, my upcoming page, my mybloglog page, my tumblr aggregator page, some garbage (sites stealing my content), my clipmarks page, techmeme pages i was on, my Jaiku page, then several people linking to me on their blog.

From all these pages, you could learn pretty much everything about me, you would get (in order of google results): a pretty inside look at what i’m interested in and what i’ve been doing (my blog), personal info on me including how to contact me and my employment history (my home page), what i’ve been doing up to the minute (twitter), what i’ve read that i thought was worth recommending lately (digg), pictures of almost everything I do (flickr), what i’ve found most interesting lately that I wanted to save for later (delicious), things I’ve read lately (stumbleupon), what events i’m planning on attending next (upcoming), what blogs i’ve read lately (mybloglog), everything I’ve written lately (tumblr), what sections of recent web pages i’ve been to i thought were worth saving (clipmarks), and more.

That is all information that I have willingly put on the internet. That’s MY choice. Here’s where it gets interesting though, data that I did NOT choose to put on the internet. We’ve already got my name, a cursory reading of my web site and my blog will reveal that I live in Mapleton Utah. Armed with this information we can go to WhitePages.com and search for Phil Burns in Mapleton Utah. That simple search reveals my home address and phone number, not devastating at all, right?

Armed with my name, address and phone number, let’s see what we can find out. If we go to the Utah County Tax Records, we can do a search on my address. That reveals my house id number and when we click on that, we can find out how much my house is appraised for and how much my property tax is! If we search through opensecrets.org, we can find my political contributions – I certainly didn’t put that there!

Now, if we’re willing to spend some money, we cand find some interesting history. PublicRecordsNow lists 2 database hits for me. For$59.95, you can get access to the following:

Subject: PHILLIP B BURNS
1 unique address in Jackson, TN (This is accurate)
1 unique address in Dayton, UT (This is NOT accurate)
2 unique address in Hill Air Force Base, UT (This is accurate)
1 unique address in Mapleton, UT (This is accurate)
2 unique address in Ogden, UT (This is accurate)
2 unique address in Orem, UT (This is accurate)
1 unique address in Pleasant Grove, UT (This is accurate)
1 unique address in West Jordan, UT (This is accurate)
This report may include the following records:

The tables above accurately list my relatives!

For $60.00, which is truly nothing to be able to completely invade my privacy, you’ll have access to everything about me and my extended family, when I was married, when my kids were born, my SSAN, who I live by, my financial status (judgements and bankrupties). For a little more, you can get my full credit report as well!

So, the point here is that Privacy is DEAD! If you harbor any belief that your personal information is somehow private, for $60 bucks I can find out anything Google doesn’t know.

So, what’s the point of this? The point is: Get Over It! Embrace the fact that you DON’T have privacy and just live with it. The reason that so much personal information on me is easily available is simply because I’ve embraced the fact that if you really wanted to find something out about me, you could, and there is NOTHING I can do about it! Therefore, I simply make it easier for the people whom I want to be able to find information about me to find it.

So, the original question for this discussion was, should a photo of a 4 month old be posted on the internet? Well, if I really wanted a photo of your kid, I’d be able to get it – I could easily find your address and just go sit there and take a picture. What’s the point of not sharing a picture of your kid?

The other issue at hand here is that the internet generation is putting there thoughts and feelings on the internet, where anyone can find them. I know teenagers (my daughters friends) who are absolutely astounded when they find out that I do research on them before I let my daughter go spend time at their house. Or that I research the boys she wants to date – and I find all kinds of things out! Kids these days are NOT aware of how easy it is to find information about them, they seem to think that if they put something on mySpace that nobody will find it – and they’re wrong – and it’s going to come back to haunt them. Kids today need to understand that the stupid little quips they’re sharing with their friends being “cool” or “funny” are going to be there still when they’re 10 years older and looking for a job!

Do you disagree?  Do you believe that you somehow still have some shread of privacy?  Does it bother you that with a little research time and especially with a little bit of money I (you) can find out almost anything I (you) want to know about you (me)?