RE: Bruce Schneier's "A Revised Taxonomy of Social Networking Dat a"

"Derived data is data about you that is derived from all the other data. For
example, if 80 percent of your friends self-identify as gay, you're likely
gay yourself."

 

Or you're a theatre major.

 

"news articles you access (and what that says about your political
leanings)"

 

Or you're a poli-sci major or even an honest journalist trying to get the
panoramic view instead of the snapshot.

 

Dangerous.  Stupid.  Worthy of derision and scorn.

 

len

 

-----Original Message-----
From: public-xg-socialweb-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-xg-socialweb-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Mischa Tuffield
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 8:13 AM
To: Public SWXG
Subject: Bruce Schneier's "A Revised Taxonomy of Social Networking Data"

 

Hello, 

 

Bruce Schneier blogged [1] about his revision to his taxonomy of social
networking data today. He has identified the following characteristics for
social networking data: 

 

"

*         Service data is the data you give to a social networking site in
order to use it. Such data might include your legal name, your age, and your
credit-card number. 

 

*         Disclosed data is what you post on your own pages: blog entries,
photographs, messages, comments, and so on. 

 

 

*         Entrusted data is what you post on other people's pages. It's
basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you
don't have control over the data once you post it -- another user does.

 

 

*         Incidental data is what other people post about you: a paragraph
about you that someone else writes, a picture of you that someone else takes
and posts. Again, it's basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the
difference is that you don't have control over it, and you didn't create it
in the first place.

 

 

*         Behavioral data is data the site collects about your habits by
recording what you do and who you do it with. It might include games you
play, topics you write about, news articles you access (and what that says
about your political leanings), and so on.

 

 

*         Derived data is data about you that is derived from all the other
data. For example, if 80 percent of your friends self-identify as gay,
you're likely gay yourself. 

" - Bruce's blog [1]

 

 

The addition he made to the taxonomy was the inclusion of the 6th field
"Derived Data", which is probably due to work undertaken at MIT, referred to
as project Gaydar, [2] where they showed that they could analyse public
facebook profile pages to identify people's sexual preferences. 

 

So, finally, I am rather interested in fifth class identified above as :
"Behavioral data", which I feel is being abused by this new phenomenon that
is the facebook like button, and how it is being plastered all over the web.
I feel that it is just another tool for the company to gather,
surreptitiously, behavioural data about their users, in a method which is
analogous to "opt-out" based marketing which we are seemingly eradicating
from printed forms. I have ranted about this on my blog [3].

 

Anyways, bye for now, 

 

Mischa 

 

[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/a_taxonomy_of_s_1.html
<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/a_taxonomy_of_s_1.html> 

[2]
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2611/
2302
<http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2611
/2302> 

[3] http://mmt.me.uk/blog/2010/07/30/the-facebook-like-button/
<http://mmt.me.uk/blog/2010/07/30/the-facebook-like-button/> 

___________________________________

Mischa Tuffield PhD

Email: mischa.tuffield@garlik.com <mailto:mischa.tuffield@garlik.com> 

Homepage - http://mmt.me.uk/ <http://mmt.me.uk/> 

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