One of the questions I get a lot when I speak is the concern about privacy online. It would come as no surprise that I have never gotten this question from someone under the age of 35. I have been giving a lot of thought as to how I answer this question today, and some possible new answers. I have also been thinking about why it is that the older someone is, the more they are likely to be concerned about privacy online. So let’s take that concept first…
I remember how private my Grandma Baker was. She taught us in many ways that it was safer in life the less people knew about you. People had no reason to know anything about your family, about your job, about your life in general, and if they knew anything, it should be an opinion about life that you shared with them. To have information shared about you was to put yourself in danger of theft, abuse, or gossip. I suspect that there are valid reasons that she felt that way. For hundreds of years, I suspect that when personal information was shared, it was often used against you in some way. In other words, I understand the righteous fear of personal information being shared that people have had. What we now need to recognize is that the society has changed in some ways.
It has become much safer for people to know SOME information about our personal lives. It is still dangerous to tell the world that you are going on vacation for two weeks overseas of course, and sharing too much information about your sex life is just plain creepy and unnecessary. Where the line gets fuzzy is sharing your personal feelings about politics, religion, or your co-employees. There is a difficult double-edged sword aspect of sharing this kind of information. On the plus side, you are able to better connect with some people that do not know you that well. They will see areas where they can share thoughts and information with you., on the negative side, you risk alienating people that could be critical to your career. The kids that are heavy into social networking purposely fill out tons of information online because they want people to self select OUT of being friends with them when they see there is no connection. In other words, the more information they post in a profile, the better chance that someone that friends them will have shared interests.
For businesspeople this all gets even tougher when you consider that our online reputations are becoming more and more important as our credentials. It is becoming very normal for someone that I am meeting with that has never met me, to look online. What they see forms an early opinion and I would rather they hear from me than others. This means I must put information about me online. Ergo, our desire for privacy is running smack dab into our need to culture an online reputation. I love the concept that we are creating digital shadows online. The question for the next five years is going to be, what is the appropriate level of exposure of me online in order to facilitate a positive online reputation, without stepping over the line and having too much information about me available to the world.
Privacy vs. online credentials. This will be interesting to watch for a while…
Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com