I was watching an episode of C.S.I. last week. The episode was called “Still Life”, and besides the fact that I figured out the “crime” in less than 30 seconds after the woman started to scream (my wife can confirm this), it occurred to me after the episode just how potentially unsafe it can be to post pictures and information about yourself on the Internet. In the episode, the woman (stop reading here if you haven’t seen the episode) created a fantasy life with a child for herself, by downloading pictures of someone else’s child from the Web and editing pictures so that she had family snapshots together with the child.
Now, this alone was unsettling, and actually caused my wife to remove any pictures she had of herself on the Web. The only things left are in photo accounts that aren’t publically accessible. But it was this story about a new company, Riya, that really caught my attention. And these excerpts in particular:
The service currently only searches photos uploaded to its servers. The technology could, however, be deployed across the internet, allowing people to search the web, Flickr, Tribe and Friendster photo sets, regardless of whether the owner or the person photographed wants to be identified. That’s where things get interesting.
In the analog days, when you left your house, there was always a possibility that you might run into someone who would remember what you were doing, and tell anyone who cared enough to ask. In a digital world, you do not know if someone is taking your picture — with a camera, a webcam or a cell phone — and the image can be stored forever and searched by people you do not know, at any point in time, without your knowledge and at little or no cost to the searcher.
Riya has a tart answer to user privacy concerns. If you do not want to be indexed, do not let anyone post any photos of you. This is easier said than done. Also, the response falsely assumes that being seen has the same privacy implications as being identified. It does not.
So, as I said, this is really an issue for me. And for my wife. And it should be an issue for anyone who feels like they have a reasonable assurance of privacy if they don’t hand their pictures out to anyone.
Like I said, after seeing the C.S.I. episode my wife took all her pictures off the web. After reading the Riya story I did so as well. Perhaps you should think about it also.
Technorati Tags : Privacy, Security
