On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:00 PM, Andrew Dalke <da...@dalkescientific.com>
wrote:
> What percentage of the people actually read those privacy statements?
Very few ... but that's not the point. The point is that it's *caveat
emptor* -- if there's a stated policy and we ignore it, then too bad. But
if there's no stated policy, who knows?
Here's an interesting article: it would take a month every year to read
every single privacy policy that the typical person encounters in a year:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120420/10560418585/to-read-all-privacy-policies-you-encounter-youd-need-to-take-month-off-work-each-year.shtml
And the part that's relevant to this discussion is this:
"The reality is that the incentives of a privacy policy are to not use
it to keep
your info private. In fact, the incentives are to make a privacy policy
as
permissive as possible. Because the only time you get in trouble is not
if you
fail to protect someone's privacy... but if you violate your own privacy
policy."
This suggests (remember, I'm talking social expectations, not law) that
people expect their activities to be private unless they're notified
otherwise.
"Privacy" policies are really just the opposite: they're designed to
*remove* privacy in a way that keeps the web-site operator out of trouble.
> Hence we have the unfortunate case that industry (Google, Microsoft,
> Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, and the like) have much better data about user
searches
> than the academic research field does.
>
> Just like the large, proprietary chemistry search system providers
> have a much better knowledge of how chemists search than the rest
> of us - they actually have the data that most of us don't!
>
> (Well, Craig probably has some of it. :)
Indeed.
Craig
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
_______________________________________________
Blueobelisk-discuss mailing list
Blueobelisk-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/blueobelisk-discuss
