[LINK] 'Social Networking Systems' and Privacy

[Roger Clarke]

I expressed serious concern about Plaxo and its ilk last year:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/ContactPITs.html

I've just had a call from the Australian Financial Reviews' John 
Davidson, asking whether Plaxo's new, improved privacy policy 
satisfied my concerns.

I didn't know anything about a new privacy policy.  (When I sent them 
the paper and sought a dialogue, they failed to engage).

So I answered in the generic - fundamentally, these services are 
extremely dangerous;  there are few countries that regulate personal 
data held by individuals, especially for social rather than business 
purposes;  and privacy policies mean very little, because (a) actions 
and practices are what do damage, not policies, and (b) there's very 
little effective law in place, so privacy policies have almost no 
actual legal impact.

I see that Plaxo's Privacy Policy at:
http://www.plaxo.com/privacy/policy/
is dated May 6th, 2004 - so it's presumably undergone some degree of 
change since I wrote.

To the company's credit, they've provided a differences document at:
http://www.plaxo.com/privacy/changes
and have given an undertaking to do so in the future as well.

I'm buried right now.  If anyone has done an analysis, or knows of 
one, or can offer John something more than the above level of 
wishy-washy generality, please contact him.  A cc. to me would be 
appreciated.

-- 
Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                 Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au            http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program, University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Baker Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre, U.N.S.W
Visiting Fellow in Computer Science, Australian National University