How Much Data Do You Really Want Portable?
01/24/2008, 7 months ago
I've been following the barrage of news regarding Data Portability with a mix of excitement and trepidation. I've been a proponent of OpenID, and regularly use services like PassPack to keep track of the ridiculous number of log-ins I seem to have accumulated. At the same time, I worry about what data is essentially mine, and what doesn't rightfully belong to me. I'm still not convinced that Robert Scoble owned the contact information for his 5000 “friends” on Facebook, and that is the facet of Data Portability that worries me, at least a little.
David Petar Novakovic spoke to the issue of privacy as it relates to Data Portability just today. In his post, he states that “Dataportability does not give any more or less users access to your personal information than before.” I'm fairly certain that he's correct. After all, if you already have the information out there, it's out there, but not all conveniently packaged up for you to move around.
However, as Chris Saad states in his comments on this post, “There is no silver bullet for privacy - in reality it will take a multi-faced approach to solving the issues.” In other words, there isn't an answer right now. The plan is that privacy won't be an issue, and I would assume that they would allow different levels of privacy settings based on the site you are sharing your data with.
However, we have the apparently imminent arrival of Google Health. Google has already joined the Data Portability Workgroup, and the sheer amount of data that Google has for me already keeps me up some nights, but the screenshot alone should set off alarm bells in just about anyone. If you use Calendar, they know where you are. Use Maps and they probably know where you live. Use Checkout and they have at least a portion of your financial information. Use Gmail and they have scads of personal information, from family interactions to passwords sent to receipts for online transactions to work-related information. And how they are going to store my health information? A list of any medications, doctors, or health problems stored in the Google data centers?
I'm finding that the more avenues I have to share my data online, the more I find myself wanting to pull what I already have out there back. I find it hard to imagine that I'm the only person who worries about the over-reaching umbrella of Google linking up to every other site who joins the Data Portability Workgroup and the sheer amount of amassed information any one entity could end up possessing about me.
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Privacy is a complex issue. The Facebook example reminds me of the example of salesperson referral. When you give a friend your contact info, you may think he or she has the discretion not to pass it along to someone you don’t want to have it, like some telesales person in a boiler room.
Michael, I think that’s an excellent analogy. The argument that’s been made about Scoble scraping the site was that you should expect to share your contact information with anyone you’ve friended. I think that the assumption, however, would be that Scoble would never need to add those same people to his contact list anywhere else, right? It’s more the pat on the head that Scoble friended you that I would assume most were looking for.
When I first started following data portability, it seemed it was more about porting my personal data, which I consider to be nothing more than my online profile and any associated data. Adding in contacts, friend lists, etc. to that concept is where it’s going to make things a lot murkier, and we are seeing it a lot more, as in the case of Google Reader items being shared to anyone in your GTalk contacts.
A nice alternative to google health is http://www.keyose.com … they dont ask you for any personal information so privacity is totally guaranteed.
http://www.keyose.com/
They have found a very smart way to achieve that privacy goal.
This is exactly the reason we created the Policy action group: http://groups.google.com/group/dataportabilityactionpolicy
We recognise that data portability is not just a technical issue, but a political one. The DataPortability Project isn’t just about created some type of technical blueprint to enable data sharing - it is also bringing together people of all areas, to discuss the very issues you describe above, which have broder relevance. We would love to have you raise these issues in the action group.
Your comment about wanting to pull data back is the precise reason why data portability is important - having a standard policy and technical framework will allow (and force) services to be more transparent about how data is used.
I’m always surprised by how little the average person worries about their information online - because it’s not clear to them what data can be collected and what data can be shared, they are bowled over when they finally realize. Developing a common standard politcally and technically will help us raise the awarness of the average consumer, and ensure that their making informed decisions before sharing their information.