Sam Lessin, the founder of private-sharing platform drop.io had this to say about privacy in a recent issue of BrandWeek:
It is now far more expensive to keep content
private than it is to publish it widely—not because of the rise in
security expense; because the costs of publishing information have
fallen more rapidly than those of private sharing. For all of human
history it's been more pricey to share information widely than
privately; now, the reverse is true.
To help users control private information, providers have developed complex mechanisms that require ever-greater amounts of user input. The most recognizable form of this is social networking. These systems help users construct trusted identities and then define sets of relationships, roles and permissions to define how they want their information to be accessed. The central conceit is that additional layers of information can be deployed to seal private information.
I argue that such a model is not sustainable. It asks users to trust services with even richer private information and relationships (accounts, e-mail addresses, other personal identifiers). These services are not only raising the cost of private sharing but, in some cases, the extra data only creates new vulnerabilities.
Where, then, does all this leave us? A new model is emerging: Simple privacy. Ultimately a return to historical norms, it means that less is more. Within this construct, people share only what data they wish and with whom they wish. The simple-privacy model minimizes the informational footprint needed to privately share information and it doesn't require embedded accounts or any social elements. The result is that privacy becomes heightened, and for a very simple reason: It is impossible for a system to expose maliciously or accidentally that which it does not know.
I predict that this model of private sharing will prevail again, as it has in the past, and the period we're in now will eventually be seen as a deviation from the historical norm—the one in which privacy, if you can imagine, was a relatively simple thing to maintain.
To help users control private information, providers have developed complex mechanisms that require ever-greater amounts of user input. The most recognizable form of this is social networking. These systems help users construct trusted identities and then define sets of relationships, roles and permissions to define how they want their information to be accessed. The central conceit is that additional layers of information can be deployed to seal private information.
I argue that such a model is not sustainable. It asks users to trust services with even richer private information and relationships (accounts, e-mail addresses, other personal identifiers). These services are not only raising the cost of private sharing but, in some cases, the extra data only creates new vulnerabilities.
Where, then, does all this leave us? A new model is emerging: Simple privacy. Ultimately a return to historical norms, it means that less is more. Within this construct, people share only what data they wish and with whom they wish. The simple-privacy model minimizes the informational footprint needed to privately share information and it doesn't require embedded accounts or any social elements. The result is that privacy becomes heightened, and for a very simple reason: It is impossible for a system to expose maliciously or accidentally that which it does not know.
I predict that this model of private sharing will prevail again, as it has in the past, and the period we're in now will eventually be seen as a deviation from the historical norm—the one in which privacy, if you can imagine, was a relatively simple thing to maintain.
What do you think?
Different levels of detail for different types of memory?
Posted by: jordan shoes | January 19, 2011 at 06:51 PM