Pop-Psychology and Privacy

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a popular tool for many pop-psych discussions, also provides a useful framework for discussing privacy. The privacy concerns that I described in my previous post can be mapped to Maslow’s Hierarchy as: Will I be harmed? => Safety Will my property be damaged or taken? => Safety Will others think bad of me? => Esteem Will I be bothered by people trying to sell me stuff? => Self Actualization Let’s think...

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Facebook Privacy Settings

I’m working through Facebook’s Privacy settings this morning as part of a new design and engineering project. Johnny Lang in the background singing “Good Morning Schoolgirl” seems very apropos. Have you taken the time to look through your Facebook settings lately? While I expected most of what I saw, what really struck me as weird were the permissions that may be allowed for friends-of-friends, and for the apps that...

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What is Privacy?

Like others involved in the emerging privacy marketplace, I think a lot about what “Privacy” means. There are many ways to approach this question, and this post is just one of the ways that I have been thinking about answering it. When people talk about online privacy, what do they mean? Most “Privacy” concerns seem to fall into the general buckets of: Will I be bothered by people trying to sell me stuff? Will others think bad of me? Will my...

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