Interesting piece by Schneier…

In another experiment, subjects completed an online survey where they were asked a series of personal questions, such as “Have you ever tried cocaine?” Half of the subjects completed a frivolous-looking survey — ­”How BAD are U??” — with a picture of a cute devil. The other half completed the same survey with the title “Carnegie Mellon University Survey of Ethical Standards,” complete with a university seal and official privacy assurances. The results showed that people who were reminded about privacy were less likely to reveal personal information than those who were not.

Privacy salience does a lot to explain social networking sites and their attitudes towards privacy. From a business perspective, social networking sites don’t want their members to exercise their privacy rights very much. They want members to be comfortable disclosing a lot of data about themselves.

I have often wondered why users for social networking sites are so willing to divulge personal information. Maybe because they do not think or see any mention of privacy? Maybe its other factors at work too, such as the change in social views on what is privacy, and what constitutes personal information that should be kept private.

The information that users willing give up on social networking sites blows my mind, yet users to not think twice about it. Regardless of whether it may be private or not. So this must also play a factor, it has become acceptable and perhaps the norm to display this information publicly.

The article makes me think about cloud computing and the storing of private and company data in the cloud. While users and companies will desire and expect security and privacy with their data, will the mention of this deter uptake? Even if subconsciously? Now, I would assume that a group will not let this deter them, and rather would expect this mentioning. Yet individuals on the other hand…

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