As you may or may not know, Dave Winer of Scripting News (scripting.com) recently created Club 140 (club140.org) a "fun" project to keep track of people he follows who have posted "perfect" Twitter messages, ones that are exactly 140 characters long.
Dave Winer (davewiner on twitter.com) has not yet responded to my announcement of major data privacy breaches for "protected" twitter accounts on his club140.org project.
On Twitter, the people whom you follow who have "protected" twitter accounts have a small red padlock displayed at the end of their posts in your logged in homepage on twitter, the title text
of this image is "(Users Name)’s updates are protected! Please don’t share."
Dave Winer's Club 140 project displays the information of these "protected" accounts, thus making them public and archived.
The project also has a flaw when someone writes a message on twitter which is sent to @davewiner or if they happen to simply follow @davewiner and just write a general message on twitter which is exactly 140 characters long, it gets archived on the Club 140 project. You don't opt-in to this Club 140, if you follow @davewiner on twitter, he's Club 140 project could already be archiving your messages if your meet the requirements mentioned above.
If you realize for whatever reason, that you maybe decide your words will be misinterpreted, or you change your mind
about something you wrote, it remains archived to the project even after you delete it on twitter. I think his Club 140 project archives every 10 minutes (25, 35, 45,
55...) so if your message is posted on twitter just before it gets archived to the project, then you delete it from twitter just after it got archived it remains public on the project.
This breach is a major privacy issue, imagine you said something controversial, or private which was unknowingly publicly republished on the project and then later seen on the project
website by a current or potential employer, perhaps by them googling your name or your known username!? You could lose your job or miss-out on a potential job!
While I think his Club 140 project is somewhat interesting, even though I advocate for more character space on twitter, I think there is also some concern that
people aren't opting in to this project, they are being forced.
This is a major concern for privacy!
I have nothing against Dave Winer, I read this blog and follow him on twitter as I enjoy his feedback on internet-related issues, but I just feel his Club 140 project really needs a looking into. I feel in it's current state it needs a re-think, as it's a major breach of peoples privacy.
Interestingly so far only one person on Club 140 has publicly agreed with my findings.
Dave Winer has not yet responded to my concerns and my "protected" messages are still being archived to Club 140 without my permission! I have not been my normal twitter self as a result as I don't wish to find my twitter content has been rebroadcast on Club 140.
What do you think? You feedback is welcome, please comment!
1 comments:
Oh, dude, you SO need to get over yourself. If you don't like the fact that your Twitter messages to Winer are public, just stop following him. Nothing you are saying on Twitter is so important that we care in the first place. But if you are really bent over it, just stop sending Winer your naughty-grams. You gave up any reasonable expectation of privacy the minute you shoved your ramblings into Twitter. If it was going to Winer as a SMS or IM, there are no "restrictions" or admonishments from Twitter on whether he chooses to forward that info to others or not. Deal with it.
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