Very Black 'Little Black Books'

Technology and human ingenuity continue to pose new privacy challenges. During 2003, a new dot.com fashion arose from an odd amalgam of Rolodex address-books, e-communities and dating. Users of these services store personal data on a central server, which can be accessed by other people, and, potentially at least, exploited by the service-operator. There are privacy concerns, of a kind that has been analysed many times before.

The new dimension that these services bring is that they entice users to disclose personal data about their friends, business contacts or acquaintances. That is a disturbing feature, and it requires careful analysis.

This is a brief examination of "contact managers", ie, websites that invite their users to upload contact lists and provide services based on that data. It focuses on the very real privacy risks created by those services, and the disturbing (but hardly surprising) fact that, far from wanting to minimize privacy concerns, these services seek to maximize their privacy invasion. All in order to maximize their profits, of course.

Posted on 2004-02-03 13:20:35.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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