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Have you ever looked at Spokeo? If not, you might want to check it out – that is if you’re concerned about your online privacy. There’s a good chance they have a profile on you, and it may have more information than you care to have publicly accessible in any one place. And that’s just the free part, if you pay, you can get access to even more information. 

Do you approve of Spokeo hosting this information? Tell us what you think. 

Spokeo would not let us interview them, but they did tell us: 

"The driving force behind our product was to create a more efficient and user-friendly people-search engine that would allow users to locate information and keep up with their friends more easily."

"It’s important to understand, however, that offering a more efficient mechanism by which to pull together information is not the same as providing greater access to personal information."

We spoke with privacy advocate Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of privacy research firm, The Ponemon Institute. "From a privacy perspective, it’s kind of a scary event when you, as in individual don’t have control over your personal information," he tells WebProNews. "In a nutshell, we all feel like we should somehow be involved in making that decision – whether information about us is being shared with third-parties and organizations. And Spokeo is in the business of selling information about people, as I understand it, without getting any consent or any advanced opt-in or opt-out. We are basically powerless against organizations like Spokeo."

By the way, your home address is likely included in your Spokeo profile, which is conveniently aided by Google Maps Street View, so anyone searching for you can virtually go right up to your front door. Street View itself has had plenty of privacy battles over the years on its own. Those worried about that should just love Spokeo’s integration. 

"There’s also a secondary issue, which is really equally as scary," says Ponemon. "That’s the possibility that information used and collected about you, by companies like Spokeo, is in fact inaccurate information…can you imagine information that is inaccurate, and then people making decisions about you on the basis of not the truth, but inaccurate information? And you again, as a consumer, are powerless to do anything to even change the information known to be inaccurate."

By browsing the profile created about me on the site, it is clear that there are indeed plenty of inaccuracies in the information, which really makes me wonder how many more inaccuracies are available for paying customers. 

As our own Abby Johnson mentions in the video above, the inaccuracies of Spokeo’s information likely stem from public databases that are not maintained.

"I understand the business model that Spokeo is in, and I’m sure they’re going to make a ton of money if they have the legal right to continue what they do, but from a privacy and an information and ethics perspective, this is is a big problem," says Ponemon. 

"The general issue in privacy litigation is that you have to establish harm, and the problem in many of the cases – and this is why a lot of cases get dismissed early – is because it’s hard to demonstrate harm, when in fact your information is inaccurate or it’s misused or you’re not involved in the decision for the organization to collect and use that information. It seems that the key issue is demonstrating harm," he continues. "The problem is that you can’t look at harm in a short timeline, because right now you have inaccurate information, so what’s the harm? Maybe there’s almost no harm to you. But mabye five or six or seven years from now, there will be an employment decision made based on the infromation contained today in Spokeo. Maybe you’ll be denied a job or maybe you’ll be denied a loan…"

He thinks organizations like the FTC will take a close look. 

A Spokeo spokesperson told WebProNews, "As part of our commitment to privacy, Spokeo offers an opt-out feature that is faster and easier to complete than most other people search sites. All that is required of users is an email verification process, not submitting hard copies of driver’s licenses, Social Security Numbers, or other forms of identity via fax or mail."

The opt-out process does appear to work. I went through it, and my profile disappeared. Given that Spokeo’s such a household name, this should set everyone’s mind at ease.  (sarcasm intended, in case that wasn’t obvious) 

I’ll have to remember to check back from time to time and make sure it stays gone. 

You can read Spokeo’s privacy policy here. 

By the way, Spokeo’s traffic has been skyrocketing, with over 9 million unique visitors in January, according to Compete.

Do you find Spokeo’s practices to be a violation of privacy? Share your thoughts.

Qwiki was in the news last week, as it secured a new round of funding led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and now the world can see what all the fuss is about. 

Just what is Qwiki? From a user perspective, think about it as Wikipedia if the articles were read to you in a robotic voice while showing you related imagery, and offering you easy ways to share and embed the content. At least that’s how it appears. 

Qwiki’s mission statement says:

We are the first to turn information into an experience. We believe that just because data is stored by machines doesn’t mean it should be presented as a machine-readable list. Let’s try harder.

Think of asking your favorite teacher about Leonardo Da Vinci, or your most well-traveled friend about Buenos Aires: this is the experience Qwiki will eventually deliver, on demand, wherever you are in the world… on whatever device you’re using.

Here’s what a Qwiki looks like embedded:

Qwiki has a long way to go before it becomes as broad a resource as Wikipedia, but given that it’s only just launched to the public in Alpha status, we can probably give it some time. 

"Based on the overwhelming positive response to Qwiki’s private testing, I’m pleased to release the alpha version of our reference product to the public," said CEO  and co-founder Doug Imbruce. "We believe Qwiki has created a more organic method of information consumption by merging art and science and are excited to improve the product in response to more user feedback."

"Qwiki is not search — it’s a new media format and a groundbreaking method of consuming information, said CTO and co-founder Dr. Louis Monier. "The future of Qwiki is to allow mass creation and customization of rich media via our platform, and our new public alpha features represent the first step towards that vision."

I’ve been signed up for the private beta for a while, and I have to say I’ve simply enjoyed getting the daily emails from the service, which give you random facts for things that happened on that day in a different year. 

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

There are a wide variety of thoughts on the actual time that the announcement and then the service would happen so suffice it to say, it could be this week and it could be in a few months. The point is that there is pretty good chance that this will happen. When it does there will be plenty of interested parties looking on to help them determine what might be next. Apparently this has not been an easy discussion for the Times and they have looked at several options.

The Times has considered three types of pay strategies. One option was a more traditional pay wall along the lines of The Wall Street Journal, in which some parts of the site are free and some subscription-only. For example, editors and business-side executives discussed a premium version of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook section. Another option was the metered system. The third choice, an NPR-style membership model, was abandoned last fall, two sources explained. The thinking was that it would be too expensive and cumbersome to maintain because subscribers would have to receive privileges (think WNYC tote bags and travel mugs, access to Times events and seminars).

Now, the article in New York does examine how difficult this process is for the Times because in reality, they are trying to assess what their worth is to the English speaking world from a journalistic and reporting standpoint. Some feel that they could be the last one standing as others go away as a result of online media. If that were the case, the NY Times could garner plenty of ad revenue if they could hold on in the near term. Others are just watching the paper bleed money and feel that there may never be enough ad revenue in the new media world to support the level of reporting etc that they are used to promoting.

I am not sure where I am on this one. I would like to see news outlets like the New York Times survive. We need to pay people to cover stories and do the necessary digging to hopefully get somewhere near the truth. The trouble comes in whether the truth is ever the issue or not. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if a publication is on the left or the right of the political spectrum because the real concern is the bias that exists in many of these big publications. Everything that is reported is spun and often those who get to the position of being a Times reporter use that position as a power base. As a result reporting is out the window. It’s more like opinion and agenda with a few facts thrown in here and there. Sounds a lot like bloggers actually!

Anyway, here’s the easy question for our readers. Would you pay to get the New York Times content online? Yes or no. Oh and since we are a blog please let us hear your opinions as well.

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Those Google results likely play a significant role, but Wikipedia’s popularity is as great as ever. Right now, it is cited as the fifth most popular site in the entire world. It gets 325 million monthly visitors, and the number of visitors grew 20% in the 12 months ending in September, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing data from comScore.

The WSJ also says that the number of editors Wikipedia has is dwindling. They say that Wikipedia lost over 49,000 editors in the first three months of 2009 alone. During the same period the previous year, Wikipedia lost only 4,900 (WSJ attributes these figures to Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega. His thesis on the subject can be found here [pdf]).

The accuracy of information on Wikipedia has always been something to be leery of, simply because of the open format of it. If you give the public access to things, some people will abuse it. Even if their intentions aren’t bad, they may still just post inaccurate information. Wikipedia’s has taken measures over time to try and weed out the bad, by making stricter policies for content addition. These days, altering or contributing to Wikipedia content is no easy feat.

With such a drastic loss in editors, one has to wonder if accuracy of information will suffer. Will there continue to be enough people to keep Wikipedia updated with accurate information across the board?

"We need sufficient people to do the work that needs to be done," says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia foundation is quoted as saying. "But the purpose of the project is not participation."

It is the implementation of Wikipedia’s measures for cleaning up the site that is the focus of many people’s speculation on why it is losing so many editors. Basically, it’s just become too strict. However, there are also suggestions that Wikipedia is simply getting full, content wise – there is a lack of new topics that require entries.

There’s no question that there are entries out there yet to be created, and a whole lot more that could use additional information added to them, but are the right people available to add that information? Are the right people granted access to do so?

Let’s hope that Wikipedia is able to maintain the highest level of accuracy possible, moving into the future. It needs to continue to improve, not get worse. It’s a useful resource, despite its flaws, and the world knows it – hence the site’s enormous popularity. If accuracy becomes more of a problem, it could have a harmful impact on what is perceived to be knowledge in general. People taking inaccurate information for fact can be a dangerous thing.
 

Related Articles:

> Wikipedia to Start Coloring Trust

> Wikimedia Reels In $500,000 Grant

> Wikipedia to Go Creative Commons

Yup, that’s right, doctors. Those people who need to go to school forever so they can carry huge loans into the workplace and then hopefully help us regular human beings stay healthy. According to an article by the BBC there appears social media shows no discrimination when it comes to exposing stupidity

Research in the Journal of the American Medical Association found examples of web gossip by trainee doctors sharing private patient stories and details.

Over half of 78 US medical schools studied had reported cases of students posting unprofessional content online.

One in 10 of these contained frank violations of patient confidentiality.

Most were blogs, including one on Facebook, containing enough clinical detail that patients could potentially be identified.

OK, so no one is perfect. I get that. Shouldn’t someone who is deemed “smart” enough to become a doctor at least use a little common sense when it comes to social media? This is more evidence, unfortunately, of just how disconnected from reality some Millenials appear to be (yes I am making an assumption that most aspiring doctors will fall into this group).

The overriding point of this is the need for boundaries when it comes to social media. While most would say that social media should be wide open all the time I say you are completely wrong. Imagine if human beings in general were allowed to be “wide open all the time” meaning what if there were no laws or boundaries for society in general. What would you have? I’ll let you take that one but anarchy is a likely result.

It is critical for organizations and professions to be defining exactly what is and is not acceptable as it relates to social media. While there is likely to be a degree of ‘figuring this out as it goes’ it is incumbent upon any responsible group to at least put in a social media policy framework. In Britain, at least, it appears as if the medical profession has not stepped up to the plate yet.

A spokesman for the British Medical Association said: “Patient confidentiality is paramount and medical students and doctors obviously need to be very careful about any information they post online.”

The UK’s regulator of doctors, the General Medical Council, does not have guidance that covers medics’ blogging.

But a spokeswoman advised doctors: “You must make sure that your conduct at all times justifies your patients’ trust in you and the public’s trust in the profession.”

While this shows recognition of the need this is not even close to having a policy in place and rings very hollow. Does your organization have any policies in place as it relates to social media? Are you aware of any social media policies for professions in general? If so please share them with us because it looks like there is a real need for some simple common sense in the application of social media beyond just telling people what you are up to.

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Let’s sum it up:

The Big Winner – The award for getting the most mileage out of what is most likely a non-story goes to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. I would really like to see the traffic numbers that were generated by his manipulation of this situation. From a viral Internet perspective he couldn’t have played this any better. He put out the ‘feelers’ and baited everyone by whetting the appetites of all of the mouth breathing tech types with promises of never before seen Twitter information. Most people took the bait and the exposure for the blog was tremendous. What has been published thus far (old financial documents and a treatment for the Twitter show) has been ho-hum. He is still stoking the flames with talk of lawyers meeting with lawyers etc. Well played. Lots of pub, no real harm. The downside is that if TechCrunch capitulates or doesn’t publish everything readers will wonder if they are being played in the future.

Another winner – Twitter actually comes out of this one OK in my opinion. This looks, at least at this point, to be a no harm, no foul deal that has just generated more buzz. Biz Stone got a chance to put another apologetic “Look we’re human too” post and probably gain more sympathy for Twitter as a target rather than ire for Twitter as being less than buttoned down security wise. Stone wraps his blog post with

Nevertheless, as they were never meant for public communication, publishing these documents publicly could jeopardize relationships with Twitter’s ongoing and potential partners. We’re doing our best to reach out to these folks and talk over any questions and concerns. However, our goal remains focusing on the most important business at hand—creating value for users and building the best possible Twitter service.

The “Hey, we may have had a hiccup but we’re working hard toward the goal of making the world a 140 character experience” ethos gets more mileage than if there were any actual problems with this whole deal.

Taking a hit whether it is real or not – Google actually stands to come out of this with more damage whether it is real or not. With Google Apps being used by Twitter there can not be enough “It had nothing to do with Google and the cloud computing services” to offset the naysayers about security and these apps for the enterprise. Once again, it may not be deserved but it can have an impact regardless.

Big losers – As usual, the readers and followers of this kind of stuff. All in all it looks like we are all being played a bit and happily going right along with it. I guess there isn’t much else to talk about and this makes for some interesting cocktail talk but in the end has it affected your view of Twitter? If you are using Twitter are you really concerned about the security of your information? Probably not.

Be sure that there will be more on this and we’ll be talking about it. It would be irresponsible not to. While in retrospect it may not be real news it is of interest to some degree. Hey, at least we get to see how good the new law team over at Twitter is, right?

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To launch in the next 2-3 months (by the end of the summer), Wikipedia’s new system will allow users to contribute and even edit clips for articles, posting the entire clip or only portions. Wikipedia itself will only allow videos from the Internet Archive, Metavid and Wikimedia Commons.

No video editing software is necessary to post full or partial clips, but “One of the requirements for any video added to the site is that it be based on open-source formats.”

The project also includes developing Web tools to create smooth methods for transferring and editing videos. When a Wikipedia editor finds relevant snippets, he will be able to preview them, and set the “in” and “out” points, without having to worry about file conversions. “Presently, the work flow is pretty atrocious” for people trying to download, convert, and edit video, says [Kaltura software engineer Michael] Dale, citing the notoriously confusing array of incompatible video formats now in use. With the new Wikipedia system, “people will be able to easily inject media into pages, in a way that wasn’t possible before,” he says.

Kaltura, an open-source “video solution provider” (Sigh. Buzzwords.), which has been a partner with Wikipedia since January 2008.

What do you think: a good move or yet another opportunity for spam on Wikipedia?

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Okay, you may have picked up on my sarcasm. What I really meant to say is that truth these days is a highly collaborative endeavor. I can’t possibly corner the market on that, and beyond my network of sources-who-shall-not-be-named (and how’s that for “journalist integrity”?!), I don’t hope to find all the facts. I have to run with what I can find fast, and hope that we can find the full set of facts as commentators come forward. Oh, and I guess we should hope that people read the comments, too, if I can’t find the time (or enough interest) to do a followup.

Dang. That snark’s still in there, isn’t it? Well, that’s the two sides of the debate the New York Times raised this weekend. The NYT accurately points out that the blogosphere is regularly aTwitter (*snort*) with rumors, from a single source—or none at all. Many of them don’t pan out to be true; some do. The implication here is that blogging is an unreliable medium (and that if you want “just the facts, ma’am,” you should stick to the bastion of journalistic integrity. Because they’ve never gotten anything wrong, you know).

Jeff Jarvis is taking up for the defense, saying that (newsflash!) blogs and mainstream media are fundamentally different. Whereas MSM tries to collect “all” the truth (as if that were possible—and let’s pull an Indiana Jones and just stick to facts, mmkay? If it’s truth you’re looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall), blogs see fact-finding as a collaborative effort. So while bloggers make a good-faith effort to check sources, there’s nothing wrong with reporting what they know (especially since even in the NYT’s examples, the bloggers like Michael Arrington acknowledged that they didn’t have much corroboration in their posts), and finding the full set of facts in the comments. It’s the process of journalism that’s important rather than finished product.

Personally, I don’t think either side is totally right, except that they both acknowledge this: blogs and mainstream media are different. Arrington might want to take on the NYT, but his reportage is a completely different arena than that which the NYT operates in (and no, I don’t mean tech startups). The fact of the matter is that reporting rumors is par for the course in the blogosphere and verboten in MSM.

And that’s okay. I think people understand that when they turn to each type of course, and people largely get what they’re looking for.

What do you think: is blogging questionably reliable? Is MSM hopelessly fettered by old-school mentality?

Comments

After a seemingly dormant period in Google Health’s development, one that saw Microsoft zip by them with its HealthVault service, Google Health returned to the spotlight. A Reuters report said the Cleveland Clinic and Google will start a pilot project for patients to manage health information:

Cleveland Clinic plans to enroll between 1,500 and 10,000 patients to trial the secure exchange of medical record data such as prescriptions, conditions and allergies between the clinic and a secure Google profile in a live clinical delivery setting.

The benefit to patients comes in the form of an easily and securely accessible gateway to all of their clinical information. Since access to the details requires only a web browser, any Internet connection can reach the respository.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer raised an important point about sharing health information. Insurance companies cannot share medical details about their members.

Technology hurdles face the project too, as it will have to be able to bring in information from the various systems used by healthcare professionals.

The first time the system helps doctors treat an unconscious patient by providing data about an existing condition, people will see the real benefit of a portable health record like what Google and the Cleveland Clinic propose.