Time to resurrect privacy? At least for children.

Last spring, by the end of the Principles of Invention (BUS 74) class I taught at Stanford CSP, a group of students identified an online privacy and security as one of the more important problems to address in the near future. A recent Zogby poll sponsored by Common Sense Media confirmed the students' assessment:

...three out of four parents say that social networks aren’t doing a good job of protecting kids’ online privacy. The poll finds that 92 percent of parents are concerned that kids share too much information online, and 85 percent of parents say they’re more concerned about online privacy than they were five years ago. The Zogby International poll also finds that 91 percent of parents think that search engines and social networking sites should not be able to share kids’ physical location with other companies until parents give authorization.

A large part of the problem is that people have very little knowledge and control over how the information gathered by social networks is being used and where it ends up eventually. Somehow, we've created an environment where others know a lot more about you than yourself. But, unlike a relationship with the doctor, teacher or lawyer, this personal information asymmetry is governed neither by trust or law. It is as if every time you talk to a friend somebody is eavesdropping on your conversation. Phone companies are prohibited from doing this, but social networks are not.

tags: control, information, social, network, detection, constraint, niche construction