Concerning Your Privacy in the Age of Facebook
YNOT – At the time I’m writing this, Google has become the target of some measurable amount of anger from a small but vocal group of privacy experts who are concerned with the company’s new “Google Buzz” online tool. The new software from Google looks to be the company’s latest attempt to get a piece of the social networking pie through leveraging its advantage with Gmail. The website for Google Buzz claims simply to offer these harmless advantages:”Share updates, photos, videos, and more. Start conversations about the things you find interesting.”
The privacy problem came up last month when Google launched the service. The initial version of Google Buzz would look at the contacts the user communicated with most frequently through Gmail, and then automatically “follow” those people – and make that follow list public. That let other people see who the person was communicating with by Gmail, possibly without the user understanding that this information was publicly available. Communicating with your ex girlfriend on a regular basis? That might be news to the wife.
Although Google made quick changes to address the problem, not everyone is satisfied with the company’s stated commitments to privacy. Google’s mistake caught the attention of outgoing FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, who had sharp words for the software giant and other companies whose commitment to privacy is in doubt.
“I am especially concerned that technology companies are learning harmful lessons from each others’ attempts to push the privacy envelop,” Harbour said recently. “Even the most respected and popular online companies, the ones who claim to respect privacy, continue to launch products where the guiding privacy policy seems to be, ‘Throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.'”
Ms. Harbour called Google’s behavior “inappropriate,” and suggested that regulatory agencies should push for greater penalties against companies that don’t get privacy right from the very start.
The lesson for the rest of us, however, is that we can’t rely on the big companies like Google and Facebook to protect our privacy. In truth, these companies hold in their hands all kinds of personal and potentially damaging information about their users – this is especially true for people who work or dabble in adult entertainment businesses.
When it comes to adult websites, many people who operate these entities do not work exclusively in adult entertainment. If you’re not a career adult industry professional, then you might want to give some serious thought to how you will avoid making simple mistakes with regard to social networking sites that could lead to all kinds of headaches for many years to come. The internet, after all, can create a long lasting record of your exploits.
If you are inclined to believe this doesn’t apply to you, then think carefully. You may think that you will never find yourself applying for employment with a mainstream company, but that’s a dangerous assumption – and with fewer and fewer jobs available, the companies and organizations that are hiring can choose to be selective. Why put yourself at a disadvantage if you can avoid it?
Social networking is a powerful business tool. But when you choose to utilize these resources for adult business purposes, it might be smart to choose an alternative identity for the industry. If you’re just getting started in the industry and you aren’t well known, this is easy to do.
Pick a name that you’d like to use for your adult industry name. This is common in the industry, and in many other entertainment fields, in fact. Do you really think Huey Lewis was named Huey Lewis at birth? I rather doubt it. Just think of yourself as a superhero with two identities; but remember, if you choose a nickname like 2CoolDave or something similar, people will ask you regularly what your real name is, so choose your identity carefully.
When you do choose an identity, set up an alternative Facebook or Twitter account to use for adult industry networking – keep your non-industry friends and family separate at all costs.
If you’re really paranoid, be careful about posting pictures of yourself online in association with your adult industry work. It’s not a high risk that non-adult people will happen across your image, but believe it or not companies like Google have already started to experiment with “face recognition” software, and there’s no telling how sophisticated this technology might become in the future.
When you do post anything in a public forum, think of your reputation – both professionally inside the industry, and beyond adult. If you engage in public unprofessional behavior, it won’t help you in the long run – and will only tell others that you’re not someone worthy of their business or trust.
Likewise, if you find yourself looking for employment or trying to win over a client, and they can easily find examples of your crude, unimpressive or otherwise distasteful behavior online, you have yourself another disadvantage to overcome. You may make the occasional mistake – don’t be hard on yourself, it happens to all of us – but try to learn from your mistakes, and work hard on leaving behind only a cloud of courtesy and professionalism.
The internet continues to evolve, and some of the privacy issues that are now front and center with the social media revolution weren’t such a big deal just a few short years ago. So if you’ve already made some mistakes, don’t panic – you can always work now on correcting them slowly. Start another Facebook account, and start migrating your adult industry contacts to that one. Make a commitment to behave professionally when participating in public forums. Spend some time looking at your privacy settings in Facebook, and get to know its limitations before you utilize that site. Know, for example, that posting on a friend’s wall means all of that person’s friends, whether friends of yours or not, will see your post.
It’s worth it to learn a bit about privacy these days – it’s not just a topic for legal fanatics anymore. As more and more people are losing their jobs because of what they posted on Twitter, or getting into legal trouble because of their pictures on Facebook – one Canadian woman even lost her disability insurance for posting vacation pictures – it’s time to consider privacy just one more subject you need to research before you engage in serious activities on the internet.
Connor Young is a veteran internet entrepreneur and president of YNOT Group LLC.