It's Hard to Hide From Your 'Friends'

Here's the link - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120164900173426771.html

This article from the 30-Jan-08 Wall Street Journal, relates directly to last week's discussion about Double Click and the unintended use of one's Internet activity for unintended use.

The article starts by giving three examples of questionable sharing of Internet activities by Facebook, Google, and Sears.

Facebook has a system called Beacon that likes to tell your "Friends" what you have purchased at sites like Overstock.com - so everybody on your 'friends' list automatically know about your new, little black dress.

Google Reader can automatically let your 'friends' know about what you are reading. But, it also has a curious feature where Google determines that you have should be 'friends' with other people based on your Google Talk address book. So even if you don't know them, they are still friends and should also know about your reading list.

And, perhaps the craziest of all, Sears offered a purchase tracking service at ManageMyHome.com that, given a name, phone number, and address would report on purchases at Sears. The company has dropped the service but claimed that it was only providing "easy access to useful information". Indeed.

This rush to personalize our ever experience online, once again is banging into privacy issues.