‘Google never forgets:’ Bucknell professor on effects of social media on privacy – NorthcentralPa.com

In the internet age, the big technology companies are making money off what they know about you.

Bucknell information systems professor Eric Santanen has been researching the trends in internet data collection and privacy for several years. Santanen has an article called "Weaponizing Personal Data to Undermine Democracy," scheduled for publication in the upcoming quarterly edition of CrossCurrents magazine.

"Google never forgets," Santanen said. "You reveal things to the search engine you never tell to family or friends or neighbors."

"It's the consensus of all of the philosophers that have studied privacy that its the key ingredient for individual dignity," Santanen tells NorthcentralPa.com. "A really silly example, but something that illustrates it quite potently, is to strip a person of dignity is all you need to do is strip them of their privacy in front of an audience."

"From a privacy standpoint," Santanen says, "it's hard to distinguish between a phone and an ankle monitor."

Besides the tracking data involved in a phone, even the most idle of interactions with sites like Facebook can provide an array of predictive data. Stanford professor Michal Kosinski did a study that found that Facebook "likes" could be used to predict information about a person like upbringing, sexual orientation, race, political affiliation, and vices.

"Based on 68 Facebook likes you can predict someones skin color with 95 percent accuracy, sex orientation with 88 percent accuracy," Santanen said. "With 150 likes you can know someone better than your partner knows you. With 300 likes you know better than you know yourself."

Studies have shown that people tend to rate their financial and medical data as more important, and everything else - pictures, web searches, internet shopping - are rated as less important.

"This is the data that has potential to cause greatest amount of trouble in ways people dont fully appreciate," Santanen said.

As Santanen has continued his studies in information technology, starting from a place of looking at the benefits of tech for organizations, he has become more concerned about what the internet is doing to people's ability to find privacy and make autonomous decisions.

Bucknell professor Eric Santanen. Photo provided

"Space allows people to develop new and radical ideas, in a manner that allows you to refine them and make them more robust and able to withstand public scrutiny," Santanen said. "Galileo, who said Earth is not the center of the universe. Mahatma Gandhi and the German monk Martin Luther, who said religion is something between the individual and deity and you dont need the church as a middleman to be a player. Martin Luther King Jr., who envisioned equal rights for all. People who have dared to utter and think things other than that what was socially acceptable at the time."

The Cambridge Analytica use of Facebook data to push specific narratives to specific people in the 2016 American election cycle is of particular concern in Santanen's work.

"It's easy to create an electronic blueprint of emotional cues to push peoples buttons," Santanen said.

For true privacy, there's no alternative to staying off social media, Santanen said.

"The biggest challenge we face in this domain is the way these companies create their policies," Santanen said. "The company provides it to you in a little scrollbox window several thousand words long, written in legalese that makes it hard for average user to comprehend ... The strongest things is not to agree to terms and conditions, but everyone wants the app."

Santanen suggests that people avoid those personality quizzes on social media and never save a password. Use one browser to log into services like Google, and another one for everything else.

"Any feature that provides to you convenience is going to rat you out for your privacy," Santanen said.

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'Google never forgets:' Bucknell professor on effects of social media on privacy - NorthcentralPa.com