Private Message Me
Do you know what ECPA is? Well no matter, it seems the mega-byte-billionaires don’t know much about it either. But for the record, its the Electronic Communications Privacy Act which defines restrictions on the use of wiretaps, telephone calls and transmission of electronic data. But the document was written in 1986 and a lot has changed in terms of how data is stored and there have been a flurry of complimentary actions like the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1994 which now make everything clear as conduit.
Take messaging for instance, you know …. Instant Messages, Messenger, Chat … Facebook uses a lot of terms to qualify the interpersonal communication between two of more of its community members. But one word you won’t hear it using is the word PRIVATE messaging and its not a matter of semantics but rather an intentional omission because Facebook does not want to be caught in a breach of privacy. Especially when there is a class action lawsuit with the social networking giant data mining personal messages. Facebook had hoped the lawsuit that began in 2013 would be thrown out, but “The judge in the case isn’t buying the argument that this is sanctioned activity under terms of service agreements users assent to when they use Facebook.” Facebook isn’t alone of course. Twitter has a similar class action lawsuit over a similar snooping private conversations.
Back in the day when I use to play in the world of CIOs and CSOs we teased about security through obsquirity and it seems to me for all of the checks and balances we pretend to have around the oxymoron of electronic privacy that we have obscured the issue sufficiently to keep us from ever questioning big brother’s watchful eye that in a nano-blink sends our URL to a third party retailer waiting to pounce on our bitcoin.
On my end of the irrelevant n=1 case data, my son sent me a link this morning to the brand of Iams Cat Food he wanted me to include on my online food order. And within a matter of minutes the following IAMS advert came up on my Facebook news feed. Not any IAMS add .. but that exact product that Dan sent me the link for. Was FB sending information from my personal chat to one of their 3rd party vampire-vendors? Or did FB only follow my outbound links from inside my personal message chat? Or was it simply a coincidence? You get to draw your own conclusions. And whatever helps you to sleep at night is fine by me.
It did surprise me. And it made me stop and think (translate: blog). Am I likely to do anything different in my instant message chat? Probably not. I’m not going to be running for office any time soon. And my practice is typically one in which I keep my word impeccable, because you know what they say about karma. But it would do me good to remember when I see those “impulse” buys on my sidebar that someone has their hand in my pocketbook and they can hear my every thought (text) before I even utter a word outloud.
