after reading this, a question that has been hovering at the back of my head begs analysis.

i’ve spoken about it before as well, and even if i have been disparaging about the reaction of people to a lot of the mails i have received, some current developments mean second thoughts should be had. if not third.

orkut is, and always has been very open in terms of structure: everyone finds everyone, meets anyone, can read about anyone, can add anyone. the concept was that you would not invite someone you do not know to orkut. however, making gmail – and hence orkut – available to anyone kinda kicks that idea in the teeth. orkut is not the “trusted circle” of friends they call themselves anymore. the effect is already seen – fake profiles are created for every possible misuse – whether slander, paedophilia, or just a misguided sense of fun.
scraps are literally meant to be ’scraps’: pointless tid-bits. and should be used that way. people misuse them, talk about everyone on them – there will be consequences to acting thoughtlessly. i think orkut scraps were designed to be quick ‘hey-how-are-you’ messages, not personal ads. or long messages about the self. are we still worried about the content being publicly accessible? delete all scraps. i have nearly 2000, would keeping them help me? i think not. deleted.
how restrictive is orkut when it comes to details ? you can choose who can see what, some generic details are open to all. those details, i should think, are pretty common. or obvious. religion, language, books, music.. these are shared by a wide majority. i see now that ‘google talk id’ is common knowledge – i.e. can be seen by everyone – which is stupid. can i change that ? only if i disable google talk+orkut. which is pointless integration i have come to believe. disabled.
i’m not saying that these are the only issues, there are more which i may be skipping over. when they do occur to me, there will be updates. the point is that this source of possible privacy breach can be controlled to some extent.

now, for the question of whether its safe at all. there are two parts to it. the first depends on what level i stop at for restricting privacy. the second is pertaining to how far misuse by a third party affects me.


today, having an online presence is a matter of choice. on the internet, i have currently chosen to maintain a fairly public blog, a photo album, profiles on various forums, a social networking presence, and email. the blog is easily found when searched on any search engine – and has enough detail about me to identify me. is that safe ? not exactly, if someone means to do harm by using information about me, against me. but that was a choice i made when i associated my blog with me. my other presences aren’t as public, but can be found if needed. the bottom line is that once you decide to exist online, you have to decide where you draw the line of privacy when it comes to publicly accessible knowledge. not so publicly accessible knowledge – that is the gray area. google is a repository for a lot of my data – my mail, my notes, my calendar, my photos and so on. do i trust google enough to not misuse this information ? i have to. or else i don’t use the service. the same logic applies to semi-public information e.g. orkut. i have to trust that google, amazon, paypal, ebay and so many other services i use everyday will not decide they can do whatever they want with all that information.
the fine print of any online service would yield some very scary codicils. yahoo and msn are supposed to have clauses that say any work transmitted via them becomes their property. orkut retains some rights over what information you put up on it. bloglines has some kind of rights over the content of feeds you access via their interface. and so on.
when you decided to get an online presence – and that includes an webmail account – you decided you trust someone with all that information. that google is trying to centralize all your online information, and doing it successfully, doesn’t make them the big bad wolf… it makes them the smartest of all the little piggy online services out there.

misuse of my information that is accessible by someone else – the question is who.. and what. orkut ? i believe its just a neat way of keeping in touch. say, i see a profile of someone else, and from what i know of the person, the data appears fake – am i really going to change my opinion of that person ? companies will not use data they found on orkut as a metier of the person. if they do, their HR department has to be the worst in the world. if people i don’t know – and will not meet – see a fake profile of me – does their opinion of me affect me ? if they are willing to form an opinion of me without ever meeting me/emailing me/chatting with me, what does that say about them ? communities exist that degrade others, but then they exist in real life – and have way more effect than on orkut, of all places.
as far as other online services i use go, they probably contain a lot more personal and sensitive information than i would like to admit. however, i either trust their assurances and use them. or i don’t use anything online at all.

dark times lie ahead, true. too many people use things they have no idea about. or have the inclination to learn about. they will allow problems to develop, maybe even cause them through misuse, and then cause devolution.

and thats the part i hate the most.