Category Archives: Privacy

Jigsaw Data

Interesting article in the SF Chronicle about Jigsaw Data, a company with an unusual social network for buying and selling business contacts:

Here’s how Jigsaw works: You can pay a subscription of $25 per month to access the database or you can enter 25 contacts per month. Members get two contacts back for each one they enter. All information is entered anonymously.

It seems like they are expecting strong growth:

Since it started operations on Jan. 1, 2004, Jigsaw has amassed a database of 3 million contacts at 150,000 companies, and the company expects that to grow to 5 million by year’s end. Only 131 of its 105,000 members sell points, Fowler said. “Almost all trade data to get data.”

It just seems like the wrong way to build a social network. Getting your contact added to Jigsaw feels like a breach of trust…A typical way your contact can get into Jigsaw is – you send a communication to a professional contact, who in turn, sells your information to Jigsaw (similar to somebody selling your information to a spammer). Sure you can opt out if you like, but I would rather have an explicit opt-in mechanism.

Anyone, even nonmembers, can go to the site to see if they’re listed. If they are, they can set parameters for how they wish to be contacted. A person could even say: “Never contact me.” Fowler’s own guidelines tell people never to call his mobile phone, keep e-mails short and not pitch wealth management or other financial services.

I guess the basic assumption that Jigsaw is making is that all professionals, just because they are employed, are going to want to be contacted by other professionals. I personally can see the value of sharing my contact information with people in the same field. But I can imagine other people who will object. Also who is going to make sure that information is not misused? What is there to prevent Jigsaw from becoming a super data base for spammers?

There is also a valid question about the quality of the data, raised by Bob Blakley in his post on the subject along with his new business card (:-)):

BTW, check out if you are in Jigsaw here.

Privacy and Social networks

There was a time a few years back where privacy was a huge issue on the web. Consumer advocates were up in arms about companies not guarding customer’s information or even selling it to other companies. The apparent issue with that was that companies and spammers will use that information to steal the identity of customers and thereby cause them financial harm or send unsolicited communications.

With the advent of social networks, things seem to have changed.

  • There are now 110 million profiles on MySpace.
  • There are millions of users sharing their deepest thoughts on YouTube.
  • There are over 60 million blogs where users are publishing their thoughts and at times their identification information like email and address.

A lot of the information on these sites makes the job of spammers/companies a lot easier. In addition to providing contact information, this user generated content also provides a great deal of information which can be used by spammers/companies to better target their offers. The strange thing, though, is that the users creating this content do not seem to care. What is going on?

I think what is going on is simple utility optimization. As my economics 101 professor would have said – the utility the users are deriving from participating in these communities is greater then any downside in terms of privacy. Another reason could be that users of these social sites are sharing non-transactional information (as opposed to transaction information like credit cards, SSN etc.) that cannot be used easily to cause financial harm. My guess is that in the busy world that we live in, people are staved for attention. As a result, users in these social sites might actually welcome targeted offers or communications from people who take the time to read through all the information they have published. For social network users this is a way to fulfill the basic need of connecting with other humans. In this sense, the social networks are replacing the real world communities and relationships. It could also be that the tools available right now makes it hard to limit the access to the information to a smaller community. I guess that is what SixApart is trying to address with their new VOX platform.

The big problem with the current system is that information in online communities makes the users a lot more vulnerable compared to real world communities. The reason is that in online communities all information is logged and is available to all seeing eyes of Google and Technorati for perpetuity. See the interesting post from Eric Nolin on the topic (he defines cool sounding “Nolin’s maxim”). Thoughts?