What Social Networks Do Not Tell You About Online Privacy

(Privacy Tutorial at the End of the Post)

I went to visit my parents last week, and instead of saying “Hi”, my dad asked with a very worried expression, “Are you posting details about your wedding on Facebook?”  It turns out that a number of Indian households in our community have been burglarized right around their weddings (it’s the one time when Indian families will have all their gold jewelry at home and not in the safety deposit box), and the authorities suspect that thieves were informed about the timing of the weddings through Facebook and Twitter.  Whether the criminals gathered their intel in this way or not is beside the point; it certainly is plausible and points to a major concern:  The proliferation of information about where a person is (geo-location) and when they are there (real-time) can be easily misused.

A few years ago, criminals had to stalk a house for days, waiting for newspapers to pile up, before knowing that the coast was clear. That is no longer the case.  If a criminal wants to burglarize somebody, all he needs to do is track their status on Facebook, Twitter, GoWalla, FourSquare, or any other geo-location based app.  While the unsuspecting person is checking in as the mayor of the Zurich Airport via FourSquare, the criminal checks out with the poor guy’s stuff.   Twitter makes it especially easy.  All you have to do is an advanced search for “Vacation” near “San Francisco” and you will get hundreds of results. Reverse lookup their addresses and your work is basically done.
(Update: Mashable just wrote a post talking about this very problem and a website called pleaserobme.com that tries to educate users on this issue)

Last month, Andrew Hyde, coordinator of TechStars and startup enthusiast, very publicly committed location-based suicide and debated the move with Robert Scoble, and Ben Parr from TechCrunch.  Andrew gave up on broadcasting his location to the public because people started predicting his favorite spots so that they could speak with him.  Although most of us don’t worry about stalkers, real-time and geo-location tagged updates have a number of unintended consequences.

There is a lot of money to be made through geolocation-based data, so it is no wonder that Silicon Valley is pushing us towards openness. But nobody asked me if I wanted my location and status shared with the entire world. When Mark Zuckerberg claimed that society has evolved in such a way that privacy is dead, he was essentially justifying Facebook’s decision to make your status updates public.  Even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt claimed that the only people worried about Internet privacy issues are those who have something to hide.  With the release of Google Buzz, he clearly stands by that statement.   The default mode on Google Buzz causes the people you email with the most to show up in your profile, so confidential contacts may become public to everyone in your network.  In addition, in mobile mode, Buzz geo-tags all posts by default. While a user can change these settings, most don’t know how (below is a tutorial on how to change privacy settings in Facebook, Twitter and Buzz).

I am addicted to social media – my livelihood depends on it.  But I also won’t be using FourSquare, GoWalla, or the many other location-based services anytime soon.  I have also changed my privacy settings so that only my friends can see my status updates. As much as I want every 5^th burger to be free, I’m still not comfortable broadcasting my location to perfect strangers.  I think there can be a happy medium between privacy and social media, but right now users need to be proactive in securing their own privacy.  Here is how to check your Privacy Settings on the three major services (Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz):

Facebook:

1. Once logged in, click Privacy Settings on the Account Dropdown Menu on the upper right of the homepage

2.  Go through each section starting with Profile Information

3.  I use Friends and Networks for almost every setting configuration within Profile Information. Definitely check your Photo settings, because that gets a lot of people into trouble.

4.  In Contact Info my general setting is only friends for all the categories except for who can send me messages (because of NutshellMail I have to open that up) and who can friend me

5.  Lets skip over Applications & Websites for the moment (it is the most important category) and go to Search.  I only allow Friends of Friends to search for me, and my public profile is unavailable.

6.  Application & Websites (Check this on a regular basis).  Every time you take a survey, join a group, use an app, these settings can change.  Click on What you Share (the Learn More link), then scroll down to the sentence “You can view the full list of Applications you have authorized on this page.”  The default setting is recently used apps, but on the upper-right change it to show Authorized.  Delete everything you don’t recognize and you might want to look at the edit settings for apps you do recognize.  You could be amazed at what information you are giving away.

7.  Go back to Applications & Websites and click on Edit Settings for What your friends can share about you. Turn off anything that makes you uncomfortable.

8.  Finally on Applications & Websites go to Activity on Applications and Games Dashboards and change the setting to the appropriate level and you are finished.

Twitter

1. If Facebook was difficult, Twitter is a piece of cake.  Login and and click on Settings in the top right menu bar.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.  There are two settings that matter, GeoTagging, and Tweet Privacy.  Personally, I do not allow geo-tagging, but I don’t protect my tweets because it somewhat defeats the purpose of Twitter.

Google Buzz (this is new so it could change)

1. Unfortunately for me, I use Gmail as my primary email and there are confidential contacts that I don’t want exposed.  This leaves me with a difficult choice:  A.  Remove Buzz completely and miss out on the newest tool in social networking.  B.  Shut my Gmail account, use a different provider, and start using Buzz.  C.  Go to my Google Profile and uncheck the box that says  “Show the lists of people I’m following and the list of people following me on my profile.”  You should take one of these three steps as well.
2. I’ve decided that I like Gmail far too much to give it up, and I am uncomfortable that I can’t turn off geo-location in the mobile version of Buzz.  Therefore I’ve decided on option A.  Remove Buzz completely. To completely stop using Google Buzz, you also need to delete your Google profile. Then scroll to the bottom of your Gmail Main Page, in the very center you will see a Turn Off Buzz link.  Hiding it within your menu will not work, nor can you turn off the algorithm that provides you more followers as you email them.  See this page for additional information.
3. To moderately use Google Buzz along with Gmail, pick option C. Go to your Google Profile and uncheck the box that says “Show the lists of people I’m following and the list of people following me on my profile.” You will thank me when your employer realizes you are following a couple executive recruiters, or your wife realizes you are following your girlfriend from high school. See this page for additional information.

Nirav Batavia is VP of Interactive Marketing for NutshellMail (www.nutshellmail.com), the first social networking management tool that combines the best of the Social Web with the original killer app: email. The service lets you organize, customize, monitor, manage and interact with all your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.) and extra email accounts from an interactive email dashboard delivered directly to your favorite inbox on a schedule that you choose. NutshellMail is part of the fbFund REV incubator program, a joint venture between Facebook, Founders Fund and Accel Partners to seed and incubate early stage companies. NutshellMail keeps you connected and saves you time.