06 Mar 2004
Guilty By Association

Some call it the Dark Side of the emerging social networks, but it's really nothing new. People operate in a social network in the "real" world - the extension to cyberspace of these networks may make the job of the detectives/marketers easier, but not fundamentally different.

With AOL Buddy Lists, Yahoo Messenger, Friendster, and other mappable relationship environments, is it possible the information will soon be used against you? Scenarios such as governments tracking private citizens, investigating terrorist links, political groups finding potential donor lists, marketing departments finding affinity groups, and other easily imagined data mining opportunities could open the doors for information abuse and misinterpretation of individual ties.

(link) [Slashdot]

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