Virtua Gallery - A photographic Journal

It’s alittle off my usual topic (Nature) but I ran into an issue that is somewhat disconcerting and it
concerns everyone, who’s out there blogging, commenting, playing with facebook, Technorati,
MySpace or Digg, just to name a few.

Now social networks have become the "it’ thing of this new millenium, and people are roaming
around, adding tons of "friends" to their accounts and think little of the consequences of what they
are doing on the internet.

So far so good - but is it good? More and more features, plug-ins pop up everywhere that
"promote" being an online socialite. Entrecard was one of them, but pretty fast turned out to be pretty
hollow in delivery.

Now a new fad is storming the social networks and that on a much larger scale. It’s already
available for Wordpress and soon will also be be present at Blogger and others.

I am talking of ! This service is jumping all borders and is collecting data like
there is no tomorrow. Whenever you visit a site that is SezWho enabled, your every move is tracked,
collected and displayed - and you even get some undetermined sort of ranking - making you an
"authority". Cool. Just of what? Since it is an automated process - it can’t be about the quality of what
you say and do. So how much authority does your newfound authority have? Zero - to describe it
nicely. Or do you actually trust someone with a Technorati "Authority"?

But that’s just a gimmick, just like the  worthless glassbeads, the first settlers had in store for the
native Indians to rob them of their land.

The real issue is Privacy. Imagine my surprise, visiting one of the sites, with SezWho enabled, to
see comments I made months ago. While there was nothing embarrassing to be found
(logging in to Barbie Fanclub), just get the gears in your head working for a second.
Remember the day, when you were soooo sick, that you couldn’t go to work?
Right here it says, you were online from 8 in the morning to 11 at night!  Having a fun time
calling your boss an retarded idiot, ungrateful man in one of your comments. Bummer!
You’re in the slammer now!
Just let your imagination roam, and you will find it very uncomfortable very fast, to be a Star…

Here’s how it looks like. Next to your name in comments all over sudden appears a
Who am I? And it get’s better. Go over it with your mouse -
and your entire online livelyhood is there - for EVERYONE to see. What you did, when, where and
what you said…it looks something like that. Since I got mine deleted I blackened out identifiable
areas to protect the privacy of the person I captured the SezWho info from:

Screen Name, Picture, Website, Blog, your activities - and notice the two buttons on the bottom?
Show More will let viewers time travel through your activities…
And the Follow me? Well that brings stalking (and other potentially very unwanted things) to a
whole new level.
People soon know you better than you know yourself and you deliver it on a silver plate.

I sure hope that I scared the living hell out of you and prevented you from even thinking of
installing Big Brother.

A couple of points as advice to think about.

1. Have one Online Identity - that is entirely separated from personal and business use
   and never ever mix ‘em up.
2. Don’t pour out your heart online. You might be setting yourself up for trouble.
3. Go to privacy@sezwho.com and have your regular online identity  removed
   (Nickname, URL and email) all - if you have several. My request was immediately
   answered and my data deleted, which I did like!
4. Since this is not the first and will certainly not be the last attempt of hollowing out
   privacy be on the lookout. If it sounds good on paper, take your time to take a closer
   look. None of these things really come free - in participating you may pay more than
   you bargained for.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Cheers, Klaus