On privacy, the internet and being a dumbass

Nooo!! Stop taking my photo! (pic: Jolante van Hemert)

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a talk about hackgate, where the various nefarious means used by the media to stalk, intimidate and ruin members of the general public and celebrities were discussed.

Most of what we have heard come out of the Leveson Inquiry has been pretty awful and people’s lives – and livelihoods – have been genuinely ruined by what some journalists did.

But there was one thing that I just couldn’t find myself condemning – nicking people’s photos off Facebook.

I’m not talking about hacking into someone’s account and downloading private content, I’m talking about photos of the person in question that are freely and openly available.

Maybe I’m being harsh, but for a long time my feelings have pretty much been ‘if you wouldn’t be happy with the whole world seeing it, hide it’. Yes, Facebook (and Google, and others) keep messing around with their privacy settings, so it’s always good to once in a while check that yours are where you think they are. If you leave yourself open and people find out things or see pictures you wouldn’t have wanted them to, that’s your own dumb fault.

Richard Peppiatt, former Star journalist, disagreed with me quite strongly when I put this to him. He had earlier compared taking someone’s photos from the internet, when they become vaguely newsworthy, to sneaking in their house and taking their family photo album. I see it more like someone making thousands of copies of said album and hanging them from lampposts.

He also said that if people’s profiles (particularly their photos) were locked down, then he or one of his colleagues would send them a friend request and more often than not the person would accept. Once again, this is a real dumbass thing to do and if this is how a journalist or anyone else gets hold of your photos, I have little to no sympathy.

If you publish something online, you should make serious efforts to lock it down using all the privacy tools you have at your disposal. If it’s that private or embarrassing, don’t put it on the internet in the first place. It really is that simple.

If someone sends you a friend request and you have barely or indeed never spoken to them, don’t accept. Or, if for some reason you find yourself compelled to hit ‘yes’, put them on a limited profile where they can see virtually nothing – including your photos!

In fact why don’t you go check your Facebook privacy settings now, while you’re thinking about it? It’s ok, I’ll wait…

 

So does all this mean I have zero morals and all the empathy of a sociopath? Not at all. However, common sense surely dictates that if you don’t want something shared with everyone then, er, don’t share it with everyone.