Online Privacy Please - Raul Colon - photographer, digital marketer & writer living on the beach in Puerto Rico.

To say or not to say by @ricklipsett

June 13, 2011 by Raul Colon

Guest post from extraordinary creator of art, writer, and great human being my friend @ricklipsett. This is post 7 on the Online Privacy Please! series I am publishing to share thoughts on issues of online privacy.

Tonight I’m gonna teach you not to mess with me. I’d love to see your face when you go lookin’ for your car and it’s not there. Tough luck, buddy!

I may be exaggerating a bit, but we’ve seen this type of post before, haven’t we? Maybe not. Maybe all you’ve read are along the lines of domestic disputes or “chillería” (spanish for unfaithfulness). Or maybe I need to change my friends on Facebook.

The other day, Raúl wrote a piece on Internet privacy. And it got me thinking about all the things I’ve seen people “talk” about on the Social Network. I understand that some times we need a friend to talk to and get rid of things we’ve been carrying around on our shoulders. Hell, even I have posted some tantrums from time to time. And not only on my status updates, but on blog posts. The difference is I always knew consequences may follow. And some have come knocking later.

We all make stupid decisions from time to time. And posting our thoughts when we are angry is one of those decisions. Spewing bile words or thoughts can and will harm someone. It may be the person that your anger is pointed towards, or it could make a U turn and bite you in the buttocks.

Some things are better left unwritten. Some things are better to say upfront, and wait for the broken nose. Some truths are best when the one that needs it has it in their hands. Some beliefs are better to keep away from those who do not agree.

It’s not about being untruthful to yourself. Instead is about knowing when to keep quiet and reserve things for yourself or simply to wait for the right opportunity to say things in person.

We’ve come to use social media so much, that we forget, we know not exactly how to approach it sometimes. The rules of engagement are different here. It’s not like when someone doesn’t want to have contact with you and you know because of the body language. In this domain, you know nothing of the person who’s reading you. You don’t even know where or what I’m doing while I write this. I could be at Church pretending to listen to mass right now, maybe I’m driving and zig zagging my way along, or in the bathroom, wrestling it out with my intestines! You, the reader, could be an angry boyfriend, a pissed off employer or an FBI agent. I haven’t the faintest. So why do we post without boundaries? Beats me.

Next time you feel like screaming, by all means, DO IT! but in your car with the windows up. Don’t write about it on Facebook with names and addresses. Frankly, no one cares, and no one needs to know.

You know what? now that I’m done, this feels like a tantrum from my part also. Guess I better prepare myself for the backlash.

About the Author

Rick Lipsett – http://www.ricklipsett.com is an Illustrator/Graphic Designer/Digital Artist. Co-Founder of UNDOdigital; Puertorican Digital Artists Community. Fan of blogs, and social networks. You may find him on Twitter as: @ricklipsett.

photo credit by Bottled_Void

Facebook Security by @tommyismyname

June 6, 2011 by Lucilla Feliciano

Guest post by @tommyismyname.

This is post 6 on the Online Privacy Please! series I am writing to share my thoughts on issues of online privacy written by a good online friend @tommyismyname.

Personal security online has been boiled down to one of two vague threats: either someday your future employer will find that embarrassing photo from three years ago and decide not to hire you, or Advertisers will sell your information. Let’s be realistic and look at the real risks involved here.

Facebook is a very public place, and even with high security settings on your profile, you are still either putting self-incriminating information online, or you aren’t. If you take a moment to realize that Facebook people and real people are the same people, you’ll also realize there are some folks you can trust with all your information, some you can trust with some of it, and some you can’t trust at all. The best rule to follow is that if you don’t want your information to be in anyone else’s hands, don’t put it on the Internet. That being said, this is the Age of Sharing and people have come to expect a certain level of sharing (or Over sharing in many cases) that includes updates on our thoughts and activities, pictures of our family members, food, vacations, you name it: it seems like everyone expects to see everything.

But.

This is your decision to make.

Your information is yours, sharing anything with Facebook friends is your call.

Set Your Own Parameters

On October 31, 2010, my 7lb 8oz. son was born at 9:30 a.m. Within 90 minutes, my fiancée and I both had requests -no, demands– from friends who wanted us to post pictures of the little guy on Facebook. We’ve had actual arguments with family members over our choice not to post his photos online. We have become so accustomed to over sharing to the point of dissention when someone chooses not to provide information. My feeling is that our son may grow up to be a private kind of guy who doesn’t want his picture everywhere, or he may not care, but either way my role is to protect that choice for him until he can decide for himself.

Our way of thinking isn’t for everyone, but I share that story hoping that it will encourage you to consider the implications of putting your information, or someone else’s, on Facebook. With lax security settings, a picture can be shared to the far reaches of the Facebook universe. Substitute “photo” with “work history” or “home address” and you start to understand the need to think ahead about what you truly want to make available to the world. (The Facebook Privacy Policy is an enlightening read.)

Once you’ve decided what is and isn’t fit for public consumption, update your “Privacy Settings” and “Account Settings” (both located in the dropdown menu on the top right of the home page, after you log in) accordingly. They can work in tandem if you pay attention to what you’re doing. For instance, you might add your phone number and adjust your privacy levels so that only your Facebook friends can see it.

Adjusting Account Settings

Under “Account Settings,” you’ll find tabs where you can enter basic information and set preferences on the way Facebook contacts you. In order to control whether this information (like your phone number) is made public, you must then make appropriate changes to your Privacy Settings. Account Settings tabs are as follows:

Settings is where you would put the most basic information like your name, email address, etc. Networks is where you could originally affiliate yourself with your university, and now includes work networks as well.

Notifications allows you to permit or decline additional alerts when something happens on your facebook. You can get an email, text, or both for almost any reason that involves you. The list is extensive, so if you permit all of them you could potentially receive hundreds of “extra” alerts per day.

Mobile is where you enter your phone information and control if and how Facebook uses the information to contact you.

Language is very simply a choice of your primary language.

Payments is important if you choose to invest real money into virtual games, apps, or services offered through Facebook

Facebook Ads is complicated and seems at this point to be a preemptive setting. Facebook doesn’t currently allow third party advertisers to use privately owned images for advertising purposes, but in case they decide to (hint, hint) you may decide now whether they may share it with no one, or just your friends. Additionally, you may update the permission for using your name in social actions here. (Insert here a screencap of ad example from this link http ://www .facebook .com /editaccount .php ?ads &pane =social)

Adjusting Privacy Settings

Once you have entered the basic information and preferences here as well as on your profile (things like your hometown, family members, workplace, birthday, and so on) head on over to the Privacy Settings page. Privacy settings are deceptively easy to update; with the click of the mouse, you can make all of your personal information, photos, and wall posts public to:

Everyone, which really does mean everyone with a Facebook account. If a potential employer searches Facebook for you as part of a background check and your settings allow everyone to see your profile, nothing will be held back from their perusal.

Friends-of-friends, which means anyone that any of your friends is friendly with on Facebook. So that still could be your potential employer, that guy you turned down for a date, or your best friend from fourth grade who you haven’t seen in twenty years.

Friends, which means those folks with whom you have sent/accepted friend requests.

Facebook has a “Recommended” set of privacy settings which mixes all three options to allow some information to remain between you and your friends, and things like your photo and status updates to be visible to everyone. “Custom” and “Other” settings work together to allow you to add exceptions to rules. This is my personal favorite, as I can allow my friends to see my contact information except for those folks who I know would abuse the privilege.

The “Privacy Settings” page is also where you will be able to adjust permissions for applications, update your list of blocked users, and review Facebook’s explanation of its privacy controls.

Why Applications Matter

Applications come in the forms of games, tests, quizzes, and any number of other interactive activity. They are owned by third party companies, crafted to run on the Facebook platform, and in order to use them you must allow them varying levels of access to your information. Applications do let you know what they are looking at when you first use them, and you have the option to accept or decline the use of the application if you don’t like what they’re planning.

Alternatively, you can accept their “required” permissions and then change it to suit your privacy preferences. Or, if you find an app has pulled a bait-and-switch (as some will) and started spamming your newsfeed or posting on your wall (as a small number have done) you can remove them via the “Privacy Settings” page. You can review the apps you use and adjust the access levels for each individual application. You can also remove apps that you don’t use anymore in order to stop them from continuing to access your information.

Protect Your NewsFeed

If you have information that isn’t fit for 100% of your facebook population, you have a couple of sharing options available to you.

Let’s say for example that you don’t particularly want potential employers to find your status update remarking on your crazy weekend in Cabo. Before hitting “submit” on the status update, click the tiny image of a lock next to the submit button. This allows you to customize the privacy settings on that single post. You can set it to “friends only,” or, if it’s your grandma you hope to protect from your wild ways, you can choose to show it to everyone but her. (And your mother. She doesn’t want to know.)

Going a step further, let’s say you had a batch of pictures from the trip that you’d like to share with the twenty people who were there, but not the 400 people on your friend list. Facebook Groups have been restructured to be their own sub-network. You can create a group by adding the people who were on your vacation, post those photos to the group, and the pictures will only show up in the newsfeeds of the folks in the group. It’s quicker if you have a large, but exclusive, group of people to share with. Facebook groups also have three different settings

Public: Anyone can search, join, and interact in the group with no restrictions.

Private: People can search, but must request to join the group.

Secret: Only the person who created the group initially knows it exists. All members must be invited. Does not appear in the search and only exists to it’s members. (recommended option for that Cabo trip, family photos, or sharing semi-secure information)

A Word About Advertisers

In the introduction to this entry I mentioned the strange threat of advertisers using your information to sell to you, and it’s 100% likely that that is happening, but not in the way you think. Your likes, interests, and demographic information is how advertisers reach you on Facebook. An advertiser on Facebook doesn’t see “Mary Smith from Washington, DC, likes CareBears, Gummy Worms, and has a family of five.” Instead, he figures, “Anyone who has a family probably needs life insurance,” and targets his ad for the general population, specifically anyone who has entered family information or “liked” certain family-related pages.

Some folks are bothered by the concept of targeting based on likes and interests, but I think it’s great. I’m more likely to be shown an advertisement for a product or service that truly applies to me, and that’s fine. With me.

It’s fine with me, and I hope it becomes fine with you, because we have the ability -the power, if I may be so cheesy- to protect our information to whatever degree we see fit. Share everything with the world, share nothing with anyone, or find a happy medium: the most important thing to know is that you have the choice, and that you can tailor your usage to the degree that you see fit.

This is post was created by Online Marketing Strategist Tommy Walker.

If you have questions, leave a comment here or keep the conversation going with Tommy on Twitter at@tommyismyname.

Deleting or not deleting Your Online Presence that is the question?

June 3, 2011 by Raul Colon

This is post 5 on the Online Privacy Please! series I am writing to share my thoughts on issues of online privacy!

I have heard countless stories on how people had to close their twitter and facebook accounts because they had an uncomfortable situation where the main issue was privacy. If we look closer at the reason the account was closed, at one point or another, that person probably shared something that should have been kept off-line. People that I know are open minded and appreciate feedback, usually get a private message from me when I see content that concerns me. On Facebook, I have seen a good amount of people posting their last 6 digits of their social security number (in Puerto Rico the easiest numbers to guess are the first ones) because they passed the bar exam. Other people post pictures of themselves in front of their house where they have an address and house number visible to everyone.

Not only are their criminal organizations that can hurt you from a standpoint of identify theft, we should worry about how organizations are protecting your privacy, there might be contacts and individuals who have malicious intent to hurt you in one way or the other. As great as the internet seems to be, there are people that you probably did not click with or have a different opinion from what they think and they will choose to attack you.

Should I Delete my social profiles to feel safer?

When I get asked this question, I try to make the person think about what they have asked. Who is responsible for protecting your information? People love to delegate the protection of their personal information to third parties but at the end of the day who is going to care about your privacy more than yourself. I personally Love everyone trust no one. By taking this approach, I don’t make trust the issue of protecting my privacy. Taking this stance makes me protect my personal information even more. By making sure everything I share online is public information I don’t need to ask myself the question of “Who should I trust”.

It is not about closing your accounts to feel safer it is about what you share on your account and what not to share.

Monitoring is Critical

I myself have made many mistakes online and have paid for them. But I have also learned from each experience. My recommendation is not closing the account or deleting them (although there are exceptions in extreme situations where I would go the other way). I recommend you to continuously monitor. Social profiles allow us to increase our contacts and therefore the more reach you have the less control you get. Let say someone posts something about you and you never know about it. Being present allows you to fix it or take action.

How to Take Action

You can take action in many ways. When something bothers me I reach out to the person and see if I can get a reason why the person did that. If I see the person had malicious intent I look for a way of distancing myself from that person. You can distance yourself either by unfollowing them on twitter, unfriending them on facebook, removing them from your contacts, or depending on the situation even blocking them.

How much do you want to share?
On the other side it is all about how much you share. I have @danielalcolon’s pictures on a separate website and I hardly share any pictures on twitter or Facebook. They are for our family and friends to see how Daniela is doing without us having to worry about where the pictures are being shared and who has easy access to them (notice I did say easy since once you post something online there are many ways people can get to them illegally).

Overall stay alert of what is going on around you. Sharing what you know will not bring negative consequences to you. Make sure you understand that posting sometimes does have a cause and effect. If you are willing to post make sure you can handle the actions that might follow what you posted.

What are you willing to share online? What would you not?

Do you think Deleting social profiles are a solution or just a quick band aid?

Special thanks to Kaila a good friend from my childhood who inspired this post when she left a comment on the previous post of this series Online Privacy Please.

Are Organizations Protecting Your Privacy

May 26, 2011 by Raul Colon

This is the 4th post of the Online Privacy Please! series in order to share my thoughts with you on issues of online privacy.

One of my biggest concerns while working in the Information Risk Management, IT Security, and IT Governance industry is how most organizations deal with your data. Most organizations fail greatly at protecting your sensitive information; from the small mom and pop store near the corner of your street that makes copies for a few cents (and drops the extra copies in a regular trash can) to the large bank where you would think information is safeguarded.

Reputable Organizations

What are reputable organizations? From my perspective reputable organizations are very difficult to find if we look at them from the perspective of caring enough to protect your privacy. I have walked into an organization with documentation and signs everywhere on how much they care about you as a customer and your privacy to see an employee leaving documents with customer private information accessible for everyone.

Many of us have to be careful when we gauge how responsible an organization is just by thinking of how long it has been in service or how they are perceived in their industry. We can take cases of companies (Enron, Worldcom and the list continues) that were huge and perceived to be leaders in their industries, defrauded the world, employees, and customers.

Irresponsible Marketers

One of the best examples of organizations that are careless with your personal information are those that either buy your personal information from others without you knowing about it and the ones that sell the information. I know of large organizations who buy mailing list so they can do so called Email Blasts which in everyone’s dictionary should be called “Spam“. These irresponsible marketers use your information to target you by Age Group, Interest (which they most of the time guess), Geographic areas, and other factors. The problem with these Irresponsible Marketers is that they will send SMS (which sometimes can cost the person they are targeting) and emails to strangers expecting them to respond.

I have not met one person who enjoys getting Spam. Most of us ignore Spam when it is able to get by our filters. I am not sure what is going through that person’s head when they decide to Spam people and expect profitable results or even a healthy relationship.

Criminal Organizations

I would call it a crime when companies don not protect customer’s information. These irresponsible companies make it a lot easier for Criminal Organizations to operate. An irresponsible organization can become a source of information and a source of information for criminal organizations to get a hold of private information. By leaving pieces of your information accessible and criminals tie one thing to the other, creating a profile of sensitive information or basically handing them all the pieces to complete a puzzle.

Once this identity is created they can be used to apply for credit cards, loans, and/or to commit many other types of fraud.

How to Protect Yourself?

One thing you need to keep in mind is that almost all online activities are recorded and you are leaving a digital foot print with tracks for irresponsible marketers or criminals to find you.

Here are four quick tips towards protecting your data online:

Don’t Post emails or phone numbers in your personal or corporate websites. Use contact forms.
Treat emails from unknown contacts with extreme care.
Don’t share personal (especially sensitive) information online
Delete Cookies on a Regular Basis.
Check the list of examples I posted in TMI (Too Much Information) Being Shared in Social Media

There are many other ways to protect yourself but sometimes the best defense is your gut feeling and a little bit of common sense to protect you from having other people invade your privacy.

If you still have questions always remember to Love Everyone, Trust No One.

by centralasian

Love Everyone, Trust No One, and there are always exceptions to the Rule.

May 21, 2011 by Raul Colon

This is post 3 of the Online Privacy Please! series I am writing to share with you my thoughts on issues related to online privacy!

Most of us don’t have the opportunity like I did to go around various organizations and monitor what they do with there systems and data. Being part of KPMG’s Information Risk Management Practice and today working on some projects at @cimapr has helped me see the other side of the coin. I have seen how large companies manage your sensitive information in very irresponsible ways. I have also seen companies of all sizes working hardly to try to train there employees on adequate safeguarding of information.

The main factor which causes problems in a protection of privacy effort is the level of Trust people give to others.

How Trust Becomes an Issue!

People by nature like to trust others. Working for the banking industry I have been able to test Physical & Logical Security for many banks. By me just trying to “enchantment” the employees and convince them that I was authorized event though they had never seen me before they would comply with my requests and sometimes hand me sensitive information on a golden platter. The reason in most occasions I breached the security protocols was finding something in common with that employee and making small talk.

My dad is use to getting what he wants in a the most agile and non-intrusive way so I could say I lean many of my social engineering skills from him. Everyone likes my dad and he nows how to Enchant people into giving him what he wants. Many years observing how he interacts and engages with people prepared me to be very successful at trying to breach security. Another example is when I use to visit a client which was a large beverage company. Just because I greeted everyone with a smile I would get into sensitive areas.

The same way I identified gaps in security either physical or logical there are many people that try to gain your trust online with the purpose of making you lose your privacy.

I see how many people constantly share information and trust everyone on there networks forgetting that others outside of there network also have access to the information they publish online.

Personally I share anything that I don’t mind the world knowing.

Protecting Your Accounts

I see how many people block others on Facebook or twitter. If you have a public profile means that anything you publish is only a few steps away from that person that was blocked. Some use twitter private accounts so only there contacts can read their status. I have never been a fan of using a private twitter account because I believe it goes against the main purpose of twitter. If you are going to use twitter privately there are other channels that are more secure like email.

If you protect your account and then allow strangers to read your status then it can become accessible very quickly to someone using a fake account to get access to your information. You never know when someone can take a screenshot of your status and share it publicly especially for the few that decide to use a private twitter account for reasons that can get them in trouble.

Who Should You Trust Online

My good friend Moises has a line I have borrowed from him in many occasions. It is part of his philosophy on life and I have to integrated it to my lifestyle. A good example was including them in my @Meet_Meme cards I added it as my favorite quote.

Love Everyone, Trust No One, and there are always exceptions to the Rule.

If you use the previous phrase as a baseline it can guide you towards not sharing TMI (Too Mucmeeth Information) or trusting people you should not trust online or offline.

Are you trusting strangers online?

What things do you find other people sharing online that should be kept to themselves?