Privacy is on the news!

These days, online privacy have attracted a great deal of attention in technology media [3][4]. Perhaps, the online privacy topic is an old concern in some specific conversation/technology/academic circles, but privacy control was apparently dragged to the general public attention more recently due to the surge of online social networks.

It was interesting to see that online service providers as Ask.com is try to sell privacy control as one feature that differentiates them from their competitors [1].

Although there is an interest in the market to raise some awareness about privacy and to allow users to control the access to their online footprints [2], there is a question whether this will attract more consumers or not.

Regardless, I think the user must have the option of fine tunning the disclosure of his/her explicit and implicit online "footprints". Moreover, I believe that certain domains could benefit from systems designed around the high-level concept of online social networking, if better privacy control capabilities are put in place.


References

[1] Ask Eraser. http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/about/askeraser.shtml
[2] Attention Trust. http://www.attentiontrust.org.
[3] Will Privacy Sell?. Slashdot.org. December, 11, 2007.
[4] Evolving Privacy Concerns. MIT Technology Review. December, 11, 2007.