6 ms·

I don't share your outrage. The blog post linked clearly states the scope and purpose, the researcher says aggregated data will not be released and individual u

by c_c_c 12y ago

I don't share your outrage. The blog post linked clearly states the scope and purpose, the researcher says aggregated data will not be released and individual user data is unnecessary for the purposes described. He then offers those that are still wary of the research an option to not have their data used. Maybe I have a blind spot but this seems pretty straightforward and harmless to individual privacy.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Is it okay for any owner of a website to go through their userbase's private data, simply because they own that website? I don't mean "okay" in a legal sense, but rather a moral sense. It reminds me quite a lot of http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png except that the difference is that Maciej is a researcher and isn't disclosing the data to people. However, he's still going through people's private stuff. Notifying them that you're planning to go through their private stuff is the most basic common courtesy; it's why landlords can't simply walk in to a tenant's house whenever they feel like it, even though they own the property. Let's put it another way: I didn't know Maciej was the type of person to trawl through people's private information that they trusted him with. If I did, I would've investigated other options for a bookmarking site a couple years ago, or would've written my own, and I wouldn't have breathlessly recommended Pinboard to whoever would listen. The recommendation would be more like "Pinboard is great, but the owner likes to look at your stuff, even if it's marked 'private,' so keep that in mind."
- idlewords 12y ago
  I like the image of myself sitting at the computer with a box of bon-bons, lazily hitting 'next' on the special admin page that selects only the juiciest private bookmarks for my delectation. The reality is less fun. I have to look at (potentially) private bookmarks when: - someone's import file fails to parse, or has an encoding problem - there are garbled or missing results for a search query - I need to answer questions like 'how much disk space does a typical bookmark use', so I can provision what I need - there's a bug in the fulltext parser - the twitter API client misses some tweets or mutilates a URL - the pinboard API is misbehaving in one of a thousand ways - I need to verify that backups I make actually contain everything they're supposed to - I want to find and fix privacy bugs! Along with a thousand other scenarios that will be familiar to anyone who has ever had the misfortune to import, format and store user-provided data. Anywhere bookmarks come into or leave the site, or are displayed on the site, there will be bugs. If I tried to enforce some kind of viewing restrictions on myself, it would just introduce an additional layer of bugs while making my job completely intractable. I'm not a landlord walking into a tenant's house without permission. I'm a hotel manager, doing my best to be discreet, but ultimately requiring full access to everything in order to do my job. I'm going in to check the sprinklers and fire alarm even if you've left the 'do not disturb' sign on. This will be the case on any outside site you use, even one that makes sweeter promises to you than I ever did. Please think twice, and then three times, before uploading your data anywhere if you have these kinds of expectations.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    I'm scratching my head wondering if I'm being unclear. Let me try again: You created a program whose sole purpose was to analyze private user data and report on the results. (In fact, not merely "private user data," but "data which users explicitly marked as 'private.'") What you did was equivalent to a hotel manager sending employees to peep into 1,000 random rooms and compile a detailed report of what those rooms contained and what its occupants were doing, and then claiming it was for the betterment of all hotels. Yes, that may be true, and the data may be quite helpful, but people still expected their rooms to be private. Intentions matter. You weren't accessing the private bookmarks in order to fix a bug or test a new feature.
    - idlewords 12y ago
      If you want to run with this metaphor, I sent employees to look into random rooms and tell me what proportion of occupants were dead.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        Not quite. The bookmark is someone's "stuff." The fact that they were interested in a certain site is something they trusted you with. It looks like you and I won't see eye to eye on this, and it also looks like I'm apparently the only person in the world to be naive enough to trust that you'd refrain from going through other people's private belongings that they entrusted you with.
        idlewan 12y ago
        You seem to have a weird understanding of web services. All of pinboard's servers belong to pinboard. All of pinboards hard drives belong to pinboard. All of the bits on those hard drives belong to pinboard. Your private data on pinboard's server belongs to pinboard. This is how web services work. If the web service couldn't access its own data, it wouldn't be able to operate. You can only assume that some bits are yours (to use your terms: your private belongings) when it runs on your own service/when your programs are the only ones with access to it. Pinboard is not a hosting company (a la DigitalOcean), it's a web service, i.e. it's not a hotel, it's not a bank giving you a safe.

by c_c_c 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Is it okay for any owner of a website to go through their userbase's private data, simply because they own that website? I don't mean "okay" in a legal sense, but rather a moral sense. It reminds me quite a lot of http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png except that the difference is that Maciej is a researcher and isn't disclosing the data to people. However, he's still going through people's private stuff. Notifying them that you're planning to go through their private stuff is the most basic common courtesy; it's why landlords can't simply walk in to a tenant's house whenever they feel like it, even though they own the property. Let's put it another way: I didn't know Maciej was the type of person to trawl through people's private information that they trusted him with. If I did, I would've investigated other options for a bookmarking site a couple years ago, or would've written my own, and I wouldn't have breathlessly recommended Pinboard to whoever would listen. The recommendation would be more like "Pinboard is great, but the owner likes to look at your stuff, even if it's marked 'private,' so keep that in mind."

idlewords 12y ago
I like the image of myself sitting at the computer with a box of bon-bons, lazily hitting 'next' on the special admin page that selects only the juiciest private bookmarks for my delectation. The reality is less fun. I have to look at (potentially) private bookmarks when: - someone's import file fails to parse, or has an encoding problem - there are garbled or missing results for a search query - I need to answer questions like 'how much disk space does a typical bookmark use', so I can provision what I need - there's a bug in the fulltext parser - the twitter API client misses some tweets or mutilates a URL - the pinboard API is misbehaving in one of a thousand ways - I need to verify that backups I make actually contain everything they're supposed to - I want to find and fix privacy bugs! Along with a thousand other scenarios that will be familiar to anyone who has ever had the misfortune to import, format and store user-provided data. Anywhere bookmarks come into or leave the site, or are displayed on the site, there will be bugs. If I tried to enforce some kind of viewing restrictions on myself, it would just introduce an additional layer of bugs while making my job completely intractable. I'm not a landlord walking into a tenant's house without permission. I'm a hotel manager, doing my best to be discreet, but ultimately requiring full access to everything in order to do my job. I'm going in to check the sprinklers and fire alarm even if you've left the 'do not disturb' sign on. This will be the case on any outside site you use, even one that makes sweeter promises to you than I ever did. Please think twice, and then three times, before uploading your data anywhere if you have these kinds of expectations.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  I'm scratching my head wondering if I'm being unclear. Let me try again: You created a program whose sole purpose was to analyze private user data and report on the results. (In fact, not merely "private user data," but "data which users explicitly marked as 'private.'") What you did was equivalent to a hotel manager sending employees to peep into 1,000 random rooms and compile a detailed report of what those rooms contained and what its occupants were doing, and then claiming it was for the betterment of all hotels. Yes, that may be true, and the data may be quite helpful, but people still expected their rooms to be private. Intentions matter. You weren't accessing the private bookmarks in order to fix a bug or test a new feature.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    If you want to run with this metaphor, I sent employees to look into random rooms and tell me what proportion of occupants were dead.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      Not quite. The bookmark is someone's "stuff." The fact that they were interested in a certain site is something they trusted you with. It looks like you and I won't see eye to eye on this, and it also looks like I'm apparently the only person in the world to be naive enough to trust that you'd refrain from going through other people's private belongings that they entrusted you with.
      - idlewan 12y ago
        You seem to have a weird understanding of web services. All of pinboard's servers belong to pinboard. All of pinboards hard drives belong to pinboard. All of the bits on those hard drives belong to pinboard. Your private data on pinboard's server belongs to pinboard. This is how web services work. If the web service couldn't access its own data, it wouldn't be able to operate. You can only assume that some bits are yours (to use your terms: your private belongings) when it runs on your own service/when your programs are the only ones with access to it. Pinboard is not a hosting company (a la DigitalOcean), it's a web service, i.e. it's not a hotel, it's not a bank giving you a safe.