The Security Kitchen

So, I was asked to partake in a research project because they want to find out what impact your consumption of fruit has on how you feel. I haven’t been a healthy boy lately and since it concerns one of my favorite subjects ( FOOD ! OM NOM NOM!) I agreed. The good thing (or maybe not) is that they use ‘new media’ to follow up on their guinea pigs. We get a big fruit basket every week, for three weeks and everything is evaluated through chat sessions, we have to keep a (private, oh wait, not so much) blog and visit (and discuss) on a forum. Free fruit and even more internet time, I ain’t complaining.

The blogs however are where the problem is … They are private, you know, we have a login and a password. and that doesn’t allow us to visit other peoples blogs. I didn’t really try hard, in the top right corner there were the well known rss icons that led me to my private feed , something like http://researchsite/subject44/subject44.xml.

I’m sure you already guessed that pointing my brower to http://researchsite/subject43/subject43.xml allowed me to watch my fellow guinea pigs intimate musings on their fruit consumption, but also where they have been, where they work, who’s in their family …. I’m pretty sure anybody can pick up those RSS feeds and have a blast with that information.

Allow me to go back to my RSS reader and feed the voyeurist in me.

Have a nice and secure week !
W

Some people might find Facebook extremely useful, I’ve personally never thought of it that way. I started using Facebook somewhere in the middle of 2008 because some friends were using it but it doesn’t really add value to ‘keeping in touch’ for me.

However, that is not the reason why I deleted my account.  I am currently experiencing from the first row how Facebook can contribute to and/or stimulate/trigger mental issues with people. I am realizing that the whole SocNet thing can be kinda useful for thousands, if not millions but at this particular point I am appalled by the use of mind games they use to retain users.

One good example can be seen when you try to deactivate your account (deleting your account is burried deep in the interface). When you try to do so, it will show some of your ‘friends’ who will ‘miss you’.  Facebook uses a lot of emotionally laden terminology which influences people a lot.  The point I am making is that, whether it is useful to 10 or 10,000 or 10,000,000 people doesn’t matter to me, if it results in only one case of a person going into mental breakdown influence by Facebook, it is simply not worth it.

Should Facebook be banned ? Sure not, but the Facebook creators CAN do something. In the same way that they are able to detect fraudulent accounts, they are able to detect erratic usage of an account.  Examples are frequent disabling/enabling of an account, frequent change of the profile picture, etc … etc … That way they should be able to detect whether a person is having a problem and they should be able to limit time spent with the account or give the user a forced time-out.

Another possibility, allthough I’m not sure it is someway achievable, is to have access to SocNet applications blocked on doctor’s prescription.

For the person that is dear to me, I will block the SocNet apps that he uses by switching him to OpenDNS.  It’s the only way he will not have control over settings from his computer that I can think of right now.

Some people, at certain points in their lives, are next to nothing with ‘free choice’ as that choice isn’t really free at all.  I don’t want to go too much into detail right now, but SocNet owners have a huge responsibility. I hope they become aware and set up the necessary systems to handle this type of problems the same way they are trying to set up security measures.