green_amber: (Default)
green_amber ([personal profile] green_amber) wrote2006-07-24 03:34 pm
Entry tags:

LJ, Privacy and How Code Can Help

One of the reasons why most people I know on LJ, like LJ, is that you can distinguish between your public posts, your Friends posts and your custom posts. I understand most the MySpace type sites, usually aimed at younger audiences, don't support this well; I did find some functions like this when i looked at Facebook but I also understand they were added, not a built in part of the original functionality. And I believe Orkut had a bit of a scandal where they disclosed personal data?

Do any of you use other social spaces that have privacy-control akin to LJ? At one conference, I heard that on Tribe you HAVE to put up a picture of yourself to use it - that's also interesting info (of the opposite kind, natch!)

Getting more geeky, do any of you use a particular search engine, email client, browser, etc. because it gives you more privacy or more control over your personal information? eg does Mozilla /Firefox have advantages over IE in this department? I DON'T really mean general security here - except in the closely defined sense of "stops people bugging/surveilling me".

A quote from Cory to give you the idea..

"If you're a phone company, don't keep logs. …If you're a search company, abandon your cookies. Find the liberty that your competition is too timid to bring to its customers and build it in. And then tell your customers about it: BobNet: the ISP that won't rat you out! PriyaCrawler: a search engine that doesn't log you! Once your customers get wind of the fact that all the features they've dreamt of are possible, cheap, and on offer in the high street, you'll find yourself in a category all your own.”


(Admiss/claimer : yes this is for a paper I'm writing and yes, i could do with the help!! M)

[identity profile] alexmc.livejournal.com 2006-07-24 02:53 pm (UTC)(link)
I use Firefox partly because it stops pop ups which might be used for user tracking purposes. However IE may do this now as well.

I also use it because it is unlikely to ever tell Microsoft what I am viewing - but that is probably paranoia rather than a reasoned strategy.

I am happy about use of cookies *on a single site*. I only see a privacy problem where they are used on multiple sites - eg by advertisers.

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-07-24 03:13 pm (UTC)(link)
AS far as I know IE is fine for the first and last now - I have a pop up blocker that works fine on IE and I think the new IE XP SP (6?) stopped third party cokies - tho maybe someone more technoliterate can confirm.