Privacy on 2010 – Unclick

For couple months I had an idea that I couldn’t write down until this week, when Facebook had changed again its privacy policy and couple emails back and force with a friend, Fer RA, came thru.

First of all privacy is a social conception, it is different depending the culture, age, society or economic status, it also has changed along the time. Something very clear to see “privacy” could be your house and what you’ll let people to see of it. First of all, would you invite them to your house? Are you going to show it and sit only in the living room? Or you don’t care if they come with no invitation, take your beers from the fridge and drink them in your room? Depends where you draw your line is your level of privacy.

Privacy is a big concept and online privacy is a part of it. Today everything is very transparent; most of the houses are made with glass walls if we want to continue with the previous example.

Few years ago, when Internet was not very popular fill out a form was even less popular. Today fill a form is one of the first things that a website will ask you if you want a service from them, which is not bad if you want the service, however when the website turns to a big monster who collects your information and tries to share it with its partners something is not right. I believe they do it for one reason and it is not to sell your information to third parties, because we’ll probably continue filling forms. They do it to sell you the products that you want, what is even worst and much more difficult to control.

Please don’t be naïf about it, they want your information and they want to sell you products or services that you’ll buy. Unclick is necessary but you need to do it, they’ll not do it for you.

1. First little note: Fer RA, is probably going to write her computer engineer thesis about online privacy. If someone has ideas or information to share with her, more than welcome!
2. Second little note: to protect your privacy with facebook please click here.
3. You can check what does Facebook publish about you and your friends clicking here
4. Last little note: Like people used to write the books or CD they were lending, create a contact in your agenda with the websites where you registered, if you don’t longer use the website, just delete your account.