Schools and Municipalities Nudge Danes on Facebook Revealing Personal Data

Recommendation to Educators from the Authors of “Fake It”
Pernille Tranberg & Steffan Heuer
Fake It – to Control Your Identity
– ENISA report, December 10th December 2012

Kolding, a mid-size town in the Danish province of Jutland, can proudly call itself a first mover. It is not only posting cultural events and city services on their Facebook page, it is also maintaining an active dialogue with its citizens, who are pleased they can reach their city on Facebook – where over half of the Danish population is said to have an account.
But by nudging even more Danes to join Facebook, the city is pushing them to expose their private lives to the datamining efforts of a for-profit company based in the U.S. On Kolding’s page, citizens “like” posts about chlamydia, telling that their spouse is a heavy smoker or revealing that they receive social services. Kolding does state in their “about” page that it doesn’t do casework over Facebook. But it is not warning citizens against leaving sensitive personal data on the commercial network whose business model revolves around gathering and selling personal data.

A public school in Hellerup, North of Copenhagen, is just as happy with Facebook. Here, children in seventh grade cannot participate in the homework unless they have a Facebook account. The class has a group where the pupils upload their homework, including large video files, have discussions, and receive messages from the teacher about homework. The school has its own intranet, but it is slow, not dynamic enough, and you cannot upload large files. The school has established principles about the usage of social networks such as teachers not being friends with the pupils, and they also discuss web ethics. But they have no discussion about the consequences of exposing the enrolled children’s personal data on Facebook.

The city of Kolding and the school in Hellerup are no isolated cases or exceptions. State-run institutions all over Scandinavia are using social media like Facebook without any privacy considerations. We’re talking about schools, cities and even the police. The reason might be that they view Facebook as a social infrastructure, not as a commercial company. Further, they argue that they have to be where many of their citizens already are.

Some cities are still hesitating to embrace Facebook. But the reason is economics, not concerns over privacy or data mining. The hold-outs are afraid that “going social” will cost them more time and money than it saves them. Unfortunately, they are not holding back because of the really worrisome issue: the big business of personal data.

The debate about these risks of losing control over one’s data online and how to perform digital selfdefense has – up to now – not been very lively, at least in Northern Europe. Educators play an important role in pushing this discussion. There is nothing wrong about a person’s individual choice to share everything about themselves, as long as they know what they are doing and acknowledge the risks their acts entail. To do so as a child or teenager, without informed consent, is a different matter however.

Personal Data Pollution
Citizens in modern societies risk paying a huge price for their voluntary and involuntary oversharing. We suffer from very unhealthy data emissions. No wonder that some privacy experts compare the current situation to the environmental pollution of the 1950s and 60s, when humans poisoned and destroyed their ecosystem without thinking about it and many large companies denying it. It led to the rise of the environmental movement, heightened concern and stringent laws, yet we are still paying the price for our initial negligence.

Today, we are polluting our networked world with our personal data, oblivious to the risks for ourselves and our children. Personal data has become the currency that makes the digital economy go round. Our habits, hobbies and hidden secrets have become commoditized, and companies earn billions at our expense when we sign up for and use supposedly “free” services.

Use Fake Names, Pseudonyms
Educators have a special obligation to inform citizens and consumers about the risks of exposing their personal data. Young people need to learn how to keep the pieces of their digital persona to themselves and work with multiple identities. They should “fake it” online in as many situations as possible when they are not acting professionally.

It’s not that strange an idea. When very young, children already learn to play with several identities. In game settings such as Habbo Hotel, MovieMaker, The Sims, World of Warcraft and others, they are already using aliases and fake names. All of their friends know who they are anyhow. Children have no problems navigating their world under various roles and pseudonyms. Then, when they want to join Facebook for the first time, they are suddenly forced to giving one company all their personal data. The social network tries to enforce a “real name policy” and threatens to close down accounts if they find out a user has signed up with a fake name.

Such a real name mandate is neither legitimate nor legal, at least in countries with progressive data protection laws. German authorities, for instance, are instructing their pupils to fake it on Facebook and other social media platforms. We couldn’t agree more.

Neither children nor grownups can foresee what their postings can be used for in five or ten years. The Internet does not forget or let trivial details gracefully fade away. As humans we know that contexts are constantly changing – and so are our mood and opinions. A server for a social network is not that discerning or forgiving. Many people already regret some of their posts, but once it’s out there, it cannot be deleted. It stays on some record that can mined by commercial entities, governments or potential employers.

Finally, if everybody ends up being transparent and being 100 percent under the surveillance of governments and commercial entities, we will end up living in a world of participatory authoritarianism. You are forced to make yourself machine readable or risk being cast out. It is up to educators and their pupils to defend the rights to their data today.

In summary, faking it online is one great tool to protect your identity in the digital world. It is arguably a rather primitive tool today, but the area of digital self-defense is ripe for innovation and more tools and services to manage multiple identities will soon be launched. Still, using pseudonyms and aliases on the Internet is only a first step. You need to use many other tools, particularly browser extensions to block literally hundreds of companies from tracking you everywhere you go, on the web and with your mobile.