Nothing You Say Online Is Private - Bloomberg

Nothing You Say Online Is Private
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March 28, 2018, 5:03 PM GMT+11

As Facebook’s latest privacy missteps unfolded via the Cambridge Analytica imbroglio, the skeptical side of me couldn’t help but wonder how anyone would be surprised that what they post on the internet could be co-opted for marketing — or more nefarious purposes.

People in China, for one, seem to know better. Internet users here are all too aware that what’s posted online can and will be used against them.

Which is why it was so ironic when the operator of the country’s single most dominant social media platform — WeChat — declared at an earnings briefing last week that its one billion-plus users can trust their data would never "leak" like Facebook did. When the obvious follow-up question came about the Chinese government’s access to said data, Tencent President Martin Lau backpedaled and said cooperating with law enforcement was a different story.

Most Chinese internet users have the built-in assumption that pretty much everything is monitored. Some don’t seem to care. But many more are just much savvier about what personal information, photos and content they post online. Or how they post it: web users employ a constantly evolving palette of code-words to evade the all-seeing eye whenever they simply must speak up (say, “river crab” as a proxy for the Communist Party).

When I asked a friend living in China recently whether she took more precautions on social media than she did in the U.S., she instinctively replied “let’s talk about this offline, not on Wechat.” It’s pretty common for people to mandate face-to-face meetings in fear of online communication.

Another friend spoke of turning off location services, avoiding keywords that could alert government or company censors, and staying off rival firms’ products to prevent corporate spying. Others mentioned never posting on WeChat Moments, akin to Facebook’s newsfeed, or deleting Moments posts after a day or even an hour so friends can see your photos but not indefinitely. (This often happens with news articles and blog posts, too).

But even private or small group chats can only be trusted as much as the person on the other side of the conversation. A string of recent scandals in China that originated from screenshots taken of private chats have put some users on notice.

As guides on how to better safeguard your data or #deleteFacebook spread across the internet, the bigger question is whether it’s time to abandon the idea that any company, government or other entity is going to protect our privacy for us — especially those whose business models depend on monetizing user data.

The best way for individuals to safeguard their information is to limit what they share in the first place. But I’m also reminded of a friend’s recent admonition on not just resigning yourself to an internet without data protection, and why you can’t just give up on holding companies and governments accountable: “If you don’t fight for your privacy, it’s all that much easier for it to be taken away.”

And here’s what you need to know in global technology news
Facebook's tanking. Its shares are headed toward its worst month since May 2013, after an analyst warned of a temporary pullback in advertising and the FTC confirmed it’s investigating the social network’s privacy practices.

More on the Uber crash. It's said to have disabled standard collision-avoidance technology in the Volvo that struck and killed a woman in Arizona. The state's governor has ordered its cars off the road indefinitely.

Why Uber lost Southeast Asia. While it looked to conquer ride-sharing around the world, Grab was focused on serving the 620 million people that share its home in Southeast Asia.

Tightening the screws on China.  Huawei and ZTE could face higher barriers to the U.S. market under a proposal advanced by federal regulators.