Is Privacy an Over-Rated Legacy of the Past?

The concept of privacy is a tricky one, to say the least.  Most people, when asked for a quick response would likely tell you that privacy is very important to them and that they are concerned about who has access to what they consider “private” data about them.

However, these very same people will create Facebook accounts, wander the web without using any sort of anonymous IP cloaking, send emails without encryption and speak loudly on their cell phones at crowded restaurants.  Many people are surprised to learn that things like your home address, phone number, email and endless other data is already freely (or at least) easily accessible to anyone handy with a few search engines and a database or two.

As we willingly share more and more information about our day-to-day lives via Twitter or Facebook status updates one has to wonder if we might not be better served giving up on this false sense of privacy and just open the floodgates.

As Matt Asay at CNet says:

Think about it. My in-box already knows where I’m traveling, what I buy, etc. because my receipts go there. If someone were to merge this data with my phone records (easily had for the price of my AT&T login credentials), my e-mail log, and my Twitter, IM, and social network data, they’d know exactly who I know and where I’m likely to bump into them…I’d love to automatically be told that my good friend Mike is in London at the same time as I am, and have a service suggest a reservation at a favorite restaurant (which it would know through my past OpenTable reservations). I’d “pay” for that by giving up a lot of data.        LINK

At first glance, this sounds crazy to a lot of people but the question is whether it is more valuable to you to keep your travel plans secret or to make them widely available as a potential way to add value to your travel.  We are already targeted by advertisers for our social behavior and choices made both online and offline, so it’s not especially new, at least in concept, that our personal data could and should be used in this manner.

The larger question is whether or not the whole concept of “privacy” is really just a social concept that is undergoing a major shift.  I am sure that the views on privacy from a sixty-year-old are radically different from those of a twelve-year-old.

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