03.29.08

The Government Knows What Now?

Posted in Social Media at 10:55 am by Mosey

Jeremiah Owyang in his usually excellent semi-inquisitive style has a thought provoking post on if the social media world will know more about Generation Y than the Government.

I think there is little doubt that the collective “social internet” knows more about a person than whatever government rules over you right now. However, any single one probably knows just a fraction. Think of all the places you may have put your credit card numbers, date of birth, social preferences, dating preferences, identity numbers, resume, friends lists, etc. Even with tapped phones I don’t think “anyone” cares to collect all that.

But how many sites have you put all of those things in to one spot? I am hoping none.

That is the one great worry about Open Social. Until it is tried and true tested by a few million people using it on a dozen or so apps, what is to say there isn’t a still-unknown bug that lets you API all that information into one giant database. Not as a design of Open Social but, as a malicious backdoor. Scary, isn’t it?

Some day there will be that massive terrabytes upon terrabytes of information sniffer that can grab all your information from a dozen social networks, shopping carts, and blogs.

Technorati Tags: Open Social, being followed, Social Media