Why are social networks dangerous?

Social networks, in and of them, can become a great resource.  The danger from these networks is not from what we do, but how machines interpret the information we put on these networks, and how they obtain this information.  

Obtaining information:
The first issue with social networks that makes them dangerous is how other people can obtain information about you.  Suppose you have all of your information “locked down”, did you know that companies can still acquire information you want to remain confidential.  On Facebook for example, if a company cannot find out information about you, they can pull information about your friends.  If your friend’s information is public (and usually the “friends” that have public information are not people you would normally associate with), then companies can form opinions about you by what they find from these inquiries.  

Second, when you post information to other’s profiles, on their walls, or in their updates, etc., this information becomes “public”.  This information can then be obtained from others without your level of privacy.  

Using this information against you

A new site – www.reppler.com allows you to see the “negative” information about yourself.  This is similar to the reports that hiring managers and other “entities” use when trying to distill information about someone from a social network.  However, even without running these reports, many companies – such as Zynga (owners of Farmville and other sites) will sell them the information they collect about all of their users (and they collect A LOT).  Furthermore, in a recent court case, the courts held that there is no expectation of privacy in information posted online – meaning that the government would not need a warrant to access that information.  Unfortunately, there are many ways for people to get at your “public” – or “private” information, and virtually no protections.

I ran a report on myself today, and I came up with 5 problems.   Two swear words, two alcohol related posts, and a drug reference.   The problem with this is that one of my friends said he needed a “shot of whiskey”, and the swear words – well – they were swear words.  However, I posted none of them.   The “drug” reference was in regards to a friend of mine posting that she was pulling “weeds”.  The other alcohol reference I made was in regards to a posting a newspaper made about BookDefy, and saying that students had limited “beer money”.   

The problem here is evident.  If an employer, future boss, business partner, or other decided to search through my profile to see if I was a profane, alcoholic drug user, a computer would tell them that I was – or at least I was associated with those that are.   In reality though, the posts in context, do not have the “meaning” given to them by these search algorithms.   However, in the end, the computer report, and not the context would make the final decision.   Most people that use these reports do not “dig” into them to find out the context.  They just say, well, this guy had 2 cuss words, 2 alcohol references and a drug reference on Facebook.  Therefore, we are going to give the job away to another person.  

This is the real fear and real issue with social networks, and why we all need to be extra careful out there if we want a future.