Thursday, July 19, 2007

Something to Think About Before You Blog or Post Personal Info on the Web

From a Financial Times article:
The technology tools of what has become known as "web 2.0" magnify the impact of all this "user-generated content". Consider Spock.com, a search engine currently in development. It builds a profile by trawling for information about you on social networks as well as the web at large, then lets other people add "tags", or labels, to your profile that can characterise you to anyone who is interested.

2 comments:

Don Johnson said...

Hi Ben

I don't know all the ramifications of a story like this, but I have been leaving names out of prayer letters for some time now. A pastor friend pointed out to me that such letters are often posted on the web by supporting churches and could result in difficulties for the ministry if web-savvy folks found a report about them on the web.

I am sure that there are probably security issues we don't think enough about in a lot of other ways also. We can be kind of chatty on blogs... probably need to be more cautious.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Ben said...

Don,

I definitely think that's wise. It certainly has implications for missions in closed countries as well. Yesterday a trustee for a large missions agency carelessly splashed two highly sensitive names on the web. He removed them not long after, but he couldn't get everything back in Pandora's box.