E-Mail Privacy

Have you ever been angered when you've discovered that someone has forwarded a private e-mail that you went to them without your permission? I think most of us have experienced that feeling. The e-mail was intended for the eyes of only the person to whom it was sent. While I don't think that I've ever had someone forward something that was intensely private and personal, I've often experienced a violation of my privacy, particularly when I've replied to some library mailing lists. For example, a person asks a question and offers to summarize the responses. Instead of summarizing the responses, that person copies and pastes all e-mails received including personally identifiable information to the list. In my book, that is not summarizing responses. It is plagiarizing. Such a practice of distributing an e-mail without the sender's permission is frowned upon by the National Genealogical Society's Standards for Sharing Information With Others. I often forget that my library colleagues don't have such a standards, and I'm quite shocked and appalled when I see an entire e-mail copied and pasted into something that is supposed to be a summary. I've gotten to the point that I often will not respond to queries from fellow librarians. If I had wanted my name to be attached, I would have replied to the list itself. I wonder how often genealogists forget and do the same thing. I've heard of many cases where entire e-mails have been forwarded to others -- sometimes with disastrous consequences. I think the NGS standards are good advice to all persons -- not just genealogists. When a person's privacy has been compromised, they often become distrustful of sharing information with anyone else. They fear that the same thing will happen again. While it has been at least a couple of weeks since I've last had this happen to me on a library mailing list and my response was nothing that I would not have shared with the entire list had the person requesting not offered to summarize the response, I felt violated when I saw my entire e-mail copied and pasted for all to read when an offer to summarize responses had been made. Summary involves analysis of the information to group similar responses. Copying and pasting is not summarization. It is plagiarism. If we as educators expect our students to avoid it, shouldn't we be practicing that as well?

Internet Privacy

Or - Why I didn't participate in the "Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know All About Me" challenge.

I gave an assignment to my classes which they submitted late last week in which they were to "Google" themselves and find out what they could find out about themselves. They were also to check their MySpace and/or Facebook profiles to see what a person just browsing the Web could find out about them. I also gave them links to government databases of various states so that they could check the information available for viewing there.

Many of my students found very little about themselves; others found a great deal of information about themselves or about their families, some of which was disturbing to them.

Any time that I reveal personal information about myself, I am very careful to weigh that and its potential consequences. I'm simply not comfortable putting too much into one post about myself. When I choose to reveal something, I make sure it is something that I'm comfortable revealing and that there is a point to revealing it.

I do not like to blog about living persons. Most of the time such persons remain unidentified by given name in my posts if I find it useful to include a slight mention. Many of you may have noticed that when the carnivals are on topics where I would have to reveal personal information about a living individual that I have not participated in that carnival.

I simply read about too many security breaches involving too much personal information. Take for example a post that has been in the news this last week. Gov. Sarah Palin's email was hacked because of information in a news story about her. Apparently her password was too easy to guess and a hacker cracked into her email account. Those of us here in East Tennessee are far too well acquainted with the story as a student at a nearby university appears to be the chief suspect in the breach.

I do reveal information about myself in the blog, but that information is revealed over a long period of time. I am not criticizing those of you who have chosen to reveal personal information, but I also do not criticize persons who choose to blog anonymously or under a pseudonym. For a long time, I simply signed my articles with "Lori." I ended up signing articles with both first and last name because it became common knowledge because other bloggers revealed my identity. We, as bloggers, need to be sensitive to the privacy of our fellow bloggers as well.

When is the last time you checked to see what personally identifiable information about you was available out on the Internet? Is there enough there that someone could assume your identity if they so chose? If so, you better be studying up on what to do if your identity is stolen! [Class dismissed.]