To say that social media is causing privacy issues is a gross overstatement of a problem. Again we are guilty of focusing on the medium rather than the message. People cause privacy issues. Most recently there is another furor over the privacy of personal information on Facebook that has taken on ridiculous proportions resulting in pranksters circulating hoaxes about how to post a status change that will prevent them or anybody else from using data posted there. Think about it… you don’t have to be an attorney to see through the fog to the irony of posting a status change that would go beyond the terms of service of a private company’s online face… or did you even bother to read that when you signed up. Oh, and did you know that Dictionary.com has removed the word “gullible†from current online definition searches? (And if you looked, that joke has worked once again!)
There may be some benefit to the recurring privacy outcry to keep these companies on their toes, but it is not their fault if you choose to click on nefarious links, post intimate details of your life, or trust friends to tag pictures of you unfiltered and without your knowledge. Misleading emails that somehow continue today started happening before social media was all the rage. I’m not even sure that the Nigerian Prince who has been trying to deposit millions of dollars in my checking account for over 20 years has a Twitter ID or any other social media account. My telephone still rings with junk calls trying to trick me into answering a “survey†with personal information and that probably began shortly after Alexander Graham Bell prank-called Mr. Watson in 1876. There must be a reason for these gimmicks to continue year after year and morph into a high tech ruse as technology changes. My guess would be that the problem is with people, not the tricksters.
Maybe it is time to write our own terms of service for communicating private information rather than assume naively that some communications company will protect us because it is the right thing to do. Here are my suggested rules of engagement online.
- Public – The public persona is information that is shared with the world. This is usually common knowledge about an individual that is easily identified by minimal observation. There is no good reason to guard public information from anyone and it may even be necessary to interact socially with other people. The personal brand and professional brand must be exactly the same at this level because it is counterproductive to hide information that may round out the picture of an individual’s ability to contribute to society. The public person happens by selective release of information by choice. There are usually no repercussions if public information is released without permission or knowledge.
- Shared Personal – The next level of confidentiality consists of information that is necessary to engage in trusted relationships with family, friends and colleagues. Employers need proof of qualifications and experience, so this is where the professional brand begins to take shape and differentiate an individual from the purely personal. This is a complicated arena where there are still subtle shades of gray. For example, the bank needs to know salary information to determine if there is a probability of repaying a loan, but co-workers don’t necessarily need to be trusted to that degree. There are usually penalties associated with not revealing the appropriate level of information and also with saying too much.
- Intimate Self – Some things must be shared unashamedly with loved ones and best friends. The key attribute of sharing the intimate self is the feeling that the sharing is mutual and that the trust will not be betrayed. Once that trust level is established with someone there is an unspoken “no secrets†rule which means that this person knows they can depend on absolute confidentiality in an honest and reciprocal arrangement. There are two pitfalls in this level of privacy. One is of course that information shared can never be unshared. This is probably true of all levels of privacy, but in this case the repercussions are a permanent and irreparable revocation of trust. The other pitfall is what the military would call a “need to know†situation. Sharing honest thoughts can sometimes be hurtful and start down the slippery slope of denial of trust.
- Absolutely Private – There is a place in our basic humanness that demands a totally private place for thoughts and emotions. This is the private room in our soul where we retreat to think. This is where we deal with uncooked ideas, formulate personal plans, wrestle with guilt, and battle our demons. While this is an area that needs only to be shared with God, our thoughts have a way of leaking out through other emotional outlets. The leaky absolute private may become so pronounced that a part of this must be revealed to maintain sanity, but there are no mandatory filters in place and everything is a matter of conscious choice. The penalty for ignoring this realm of privacy is to totally lose control of self.
Obviously, privacy issues do not always fit neatly into these four buckets. There is a gradual continuum that stretches from the totally non-communicative soul to the opposite extreme where nothing is sacred or private. We have all met people who answer the “How are you?†question with a litany of ailments and a brief family history to go along with it. I have interviewed people for jobs who say way too much in answer to a question and actually talk themselves out of a job. In HR we must value the private side of an individual while encouraging healthy interpersonal relationships… a real tightrope walk. The bottom line of managing people is that we can never impose a privacy system on them, but respect their self defined levels of filtering. People cause privacy issues and only those people can solve them.