Privacy Policy

I've just blogged about spies on Facebook and now we have this: "the existence of a[n electronic] document that details the names, URLs, and unique Facebook IDs of 100 million of the site’s users" which is currently being shared as a Torrent file. According to the news artcle, only those accounts which are publicly searchable were included in the said file.

Another article points out that the said existence of such a file does not necessarily mean a bad thing provided that you have not shared to "everyone" (1) personal information that you wish to remain "private" or (2) those information that might be used against you.

Facebook, on the other hand, points out that the said data was already publicly available, given that they are readily available through search engines and their privacy policy have clearly set forth that:

Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, just like your
name, profile picture, and connections. Such information may, for example, be
accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into
Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported,
distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations.

In the end, it is the user's obligation to protect information he wants to protect by making use of the Facebook's privacy settings. But, since a lot of people do not read privacy policies and terms of agreement, they are still those who are left to learn their lessons the hard way.

As what has been pointed out in class several times, "What has been uploaded into the Internet remains there forever." It is, therefore, our own responsibility to protect our own trails. Self-censor if you must.

On Google and Googling

George Clooney on the last person he Google-d: “Everyone I meet. Before, I used to do it as soon as I got home. But now, I do it even while talking to them.” (People Magazine, 18 December 2009 issue)

1. Google as a verb. I’m also “guilty” of using this term loosely and with Google being adamant about proper usage and respect for their brand, how far would they go to protect their trademark? They can’t control it. Question is: will it ever be genericized? We wait and wonder.
2. Access to the WWW. From desktops to laptops to Blackberrys, we can now benefit from the wonders of Internet in a snap. From dial-up connections to broadband access to free wi-fi, the list goes on...
3. Accessible information. Some people don’t even know that there ARE tons of information about them available online. Yes, even real-life people. Try it: go Google your name and see what comes up :)

Entry No. 05

Rachelle Mayuga

Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai

“Even so, I didn’t do it.” This is a movie by Masayuki Suo. It's about Teppei, a young man accused of being a "chikan" (groper) while on a crowded commuter train. The film follows his struggle in dealing with the Japanese courts, where everyone is presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Evidence? There’s a key eyewitness Teppei was looking for. To find her, they went to the train station almost everyday, distributing flyers, pleading with everyone in the crowd. It took them TEN months. (Real-life ICT application: I wonder how fast it would have been had they made a website about it? Use of social media?)

AND EVEN IF this eyewitness got to testify, even if the victim’s testimony had much room for doubt - in a system where courts pride themselves in their 99% conviction rate - Teppei was still found guilty. Read this article to find out the director’s inspiration for this film. The fact that this is based on a true story makes it even more depressing.

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It’s Eiga Sai season once again!
For complete movie listings, click here.

Entry No. 04
Rachelle Mayuga

Crawling the web for...infringements?

While in class, you find yourself utterly bored. You attempt to go to your favorite site, only to find out that it has now been blocked. Oh no. Happiness does end, after all. But you do not give up. You resort to whatever you think can bring you happiness. And so stare at your homepage. You think, what could you possibly google? You take a look around, and after realizing that there’s no one worth to look at, you decide to google an image of someone you think worth’s looking at.

You find a good picture, click the link, and you find yourself staring at this:

That is what the web crawler does.

It’s hard to explain what a web crawler does, but I guess that pretty much explains it. Whenever you click on an image or any link, and you find the entire page appearing in the search engine, inside another box within the same browsing window, this is caused by a web crawler. That’s for us, lay people. Wikipedia defines it as a computer program which is able to browse the internet in a methodological and systematic manner. The online encyclopedia further adds that the crawler, which is used by search engines, such as google and yahoo, is able to make its own copy of the pages which have been visited to be processed later on by the search engine and eventually indexed to make the search easier.

So you may ask, Is this just your attempt at stretching the topic so far so you could have an excuse to post pictures of Victoria’s Secret supermodels? Frankly, yes; however, there is an intellectual property rights issue here. Basically, what a crawler does is copy the site and reproduces it in the window of the search engine. Take note: the crawler is able to recreate, repost, and store the webpage for viewing by people. The link to the source website will still be posted, but the thing is, even if the link is there, a person can always opt not to browse outside of the search engine’s window and satisfy himself with the page that has been searched for him.

This, to me, presents two issues: first, are websites even protected by patents? Sure, the labels and names can be protected under trademarks, but what about the page itself, i.e. the page which contains the elements arranged in a certain manner, with the specific information. Second, if they can be protected by patents, then is the fact of complete and absolute reproduction of the page, while providing all the links to the source an infringement under the law? There’s also that issue of profit lost by some websites because of the crawler; monetized websites, or the sites which earnings depend on the number of hits received, may actually lose profit when instead of these pages getting the hits, the hits just stop at the search engines.

Yes, there IS an issue, after all.

Web crawler definition from en.wikipedia.org.