Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 2
In my previous post with this title, I mentioned how I had thought through the way I had setup my interactions on the Internet in 4 distinct ways, with varying degrees of privacy. How much you share of yourself when on-line is something you must consciously and purposefully decide, or risk letting someone else decide it for you, e.g. via default settings in various applications you use.
I want to explain the 4 different profiles, or faces, that I have on the Internet and suggest that these are reasonable ways to organize the different ways of sharing yourself on-line. As I consider my on-line interactions in the past, I see that I have blurred the lines between these four profiles without even considering it, and I think it was overall to the detriment of my privacy. I have come to believe that the more you can choose the specific manner in which you want to interact or share yourself for each on-line experience, the smarter you will be about your privacy, and the more secure you will be.
Of course, I would love to hear what you think and if you believe this is too many or too few ways to interact.
Face 1 – “Business” Many people who went to college before 1990 first encountered the Internet and on-line usage through work. Today, it is almost impossible to do business without being on-line in some way, if only an email address. In a business profile, you are associated with a company email address and possibly a company website.
In this profile you would use your business email address to subscribe to professional journals or business-related web services, in addition to the regular correspondence between colleagues and customers. Your interaction is professional, and you share no more or less of yourself than you would otherwise share in any business setting. Most people would not freely give out their home address or home phone number to business associates, and as such, your on-line business interactions reveal very little of your personal life. In this profile, I think of every interaction I have as being a representative action of my company.
Face 2 – “Personal Public” This is the profile in which you interact on-line most of the times when you are not conducting your official business. Writing a blog, subscribing to journals of personal interest, interacting with others in a public way are activities that fit into this “face”. With the many collaborative and social apps that are part of the so-called Web 2.0 revolution, you need a way to identify yourself and your personal information that is distinctly separate from your vocation.
I am using this profile now for this blog. You can email me at matt[at]nontrivialexercises.com – the email address is tied to the blog domain name, which prevents me from sharing information about my work by using my business email address. This, of course, requires that you register and use a domain name, but this is not required to use this profile. You simply need to choose an email address that you want to be public – assume that anyone could use this address to contact you – and possibly a website to which to point people to.
Face 3 – “Personal Private” This is a slight variation on the Personal Public face. I use this for communication of more personal, non-public nature. For example, I use my “personal private” email address on my on-line banking and financial accounts – I receive notifications from my bank and credit card accounts through this email address. If I’m communicating with a close friend, I’ll likely use this email address.
Face 4 – “Anonymous” You may, at times, want to interact with others in a more anonymous manner. I am not referring to being completely anonymous and untraceable through IP address captures or other clever means of people identifying you on-line. You should always assume that someone could track you down based on your on-line activity if they were highly motivated and equipped – e.g. someone like the FBI – but just like having an unlisted phone number, you can put some degree of a barrier between your personal identity and your on-line interactions.
For this, you need some sort of generic email address – it’s best if it is through a non-ISP type of service like gmail or Yahoo mail. Then, you can use this email address as a username or means of identification for various services or communications. I have started to write an anonymous blog in my “anonymous” profile, mostly as a means of practicing some rough draft type of writing that I don’t necessarily want to be associated with me personally.
Being somewhat anonymous is both a potential benefit and a potential hazard. Many times, you can be more secure if you do not reveal your true identity; however, being in the shadows in the on-line world can offer more temptations to do things you would not normally do if you were fully known. So, my advice to myself is to use the anonymous profile as little as possible.
What do you think? Is this a reasonable way to organize your communications on-line? It has been helpful for me to think through, but I may have missed something. I welcome your thoughts – you can leave anonymous comments, BTW 
Technorati Tags: privacy, web2.0, communication
0 Responses to “Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 2”