What’s Your Online Privacy Number?

Just thought I’d continue with another post in the “what’s your number?” series (see my last post on the topic, which focused on the  the number of Twitter followers one has).

I have a theory that people who use online social networks fall into two groups: those who are really obsessed about security and privacy, and the ones who don’t give too much thought to it.

While I believe there are actually more people who don’t lose sleep over it, if you are like me you have a vague unease that all this sharing might not necessarily be a good thing, and might come back to bite us (see my post about a world in which everyone is watching everyone else online)

These thoughts occurred to me as I read Learning not to Share in Bostonia (the Boston University alumni magazine), which reports on researchers at the school who are attempting to boil online vulnerability down to an equation that can generate a score for anyone (I was in a B.U. frame of mind as I had just visited the school, see my post Time out for Fun).   According to the article:

The problem… is that information that most people consider perfectly safe for sharing can, in mathematically skilled hands, be puzzled together to reveal things that few people want others to know.

In a recent experiment, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University were able to deduce the Social Security numbers of five million Americans born between 1989 and 2003, mining information that is typically shared on social networks and other data from publicly available sources.

It further reports:

A recent study in Consumer Reports found that 52 percent of social network users disclose information that could leave them vulnerable to cybercriminals. Information considered dangerous by the magazine includes a full birth date, which can help identity thieves get access to bank accounts and credit card accounts and other information; disclosing vacation dates and other absences (3 percent of Facebook users reportedly advertise when their homes will be unoccupied); and posting a child’s name with photos or captions.

The B.U. team is working on an app that computes privacy scores, which people can use to compare with others and assess online vulnerability.

I will follow this and report back on any updates I see; it seems like a great idea, and one which can raise awareness about this important issue and lead people to be smarter about the info they share.

The tag cloud in the illustration shows the relative sensitivity of various types of info based on user perception about this.