As I was working on a client’s social media build the other day, it occurred to me that suddenly,  we as people, have voluntarily surrendered most all of our privacy and anonymity. This idea took hold as I was watching a 1980’s era film, and I was observing how the executives in the go-go 80’s had a brick cell phone, monochrome screen computers, got the morning paper and had a wall of analog tube televisions on different channels; this represented a person “in the know”.

Having said that, and even after having lived through 1980’s, I had mixed emotions as I thought about how in 2010 this movie would have changed? We now all have a cell phone, and usually its a phone that essentially doubles as your laptop for most duties. Most of us get our news online and have, long ago good or bad, cancelled our paper newsprint. One giant wide screen, Plasma, or LED TV has replaced the TV bank, and Satellite TV does not require a 10 foot dish. But I digress;

I think the situation is much like the 1956 version of “The Body Snatchers” where the takeover happened when we went to sleep; incrementally, so that no-one would notice. We happily latched on to the new technology and marveled at its ease of use. We raced to enjoy the fun and how it was making our lives simpler, and we became more connected one improvement at a time. Soon, we couldn’t wait to give up pieces of our anonymity to stay current with the new technology. But if you think we have gone as far as we can with giving up privacy, then you would be well served to take notice of one or more of these new changes that I found:

Take “Blippy”for example; Their website went live recently,  and what Blippy does is broadcast all your purchases online for everyone to see. You simply submit your credit card or debit card number, and Blippy automatically posts your transaction data. This data can now be cross-posted to Twitter, of all things.

Your posts will list the business where your purchases were made and how much you spent. If that isn’t intrusive enough, even more detail can be shared in the “comments” area. Twitter CEO Evan Williams is reportedly among the investors for Blippy. The Palo Alto based company insists that their high-tech encryption will protect data from being stolen or reused, as if that is the sole concern here.

Proponents suggest that we now live in such an “open” society that objections are mostly from people with last century thinking, and I have to say, I am in that last century thinking category.

Moving on, is Straley’s Seattle-based company MeteorSolutions.
This company tags each visitor to a website and then tracks whomever they tell about your site as well as how they share links and content. In effect you are virally evangelizing for that site and are known as an “influencer,” according to the company. I used to think this was known as spyware but, I suppose if its voluntary, the whole “spy” portion is out of the equation. Again, I don’t understand this “tracking me” mentality, but seeing as how I enjoyed DOS based applications in the 80’s, perhaps this is just not in my demographic.

This takes us to 21st century Employee screening. Several places online suggest now that employers should screen all applicants in a uniform manner by creating a list of the social media they will search for, on each applicant, and construct a list of the lawful information about each applicant desired from the social media search, (carefully minding discrimination laws and perceptions). I personally have always liked a one page resume myself, and a referral from someone whom I believe has good judgement. I have been known to roll the dice with an employee who I thought may have caught a bad break in life but was deep down a good candidate, and would appreciate a “second chance” from anyone. This type of decision is intuition and experience, and so far I have not seen a social media site that can replicate that, and I don’t think I would want to either.

If that isn’t intrusive enough, recently, a new application known as UStream uses your net phone camera  so you can let people see you walk down the street in real time. Ustream also doesn’t offer any real privacy settings when broadcasting from the iPhone, so people you don’t know can observe your streams when you are broadcasting. Apparently, just your credit card shopping tracking in real time isn’t enough, but now people want to see you walk between those purchases on camera.

Your ID is even ratting you out; US Passports contain RFID tracking. Any kind of card that contains information stored on an RFID chip is readable at a distance. Many have suggested that based upon a viral youtube video, that our US passports could be used to target US tourists for IEDs on foreign soil.

If your ID wasn’t bad enough, your car is tracking and reporting on you as well, and acting in conjunction with your data phone. Onstar now has a mobile app to communicate and interact with your car, as well as Mercedes-Benz and Ford as well.

Ford is planning to roll out iPhone apps that send navigation instructions from a leading car to the car behind it so that the follower doesn’t get lost if they’re separated by traffic or stoplights. Another app will let drivers command an iPhone to select among internet radio stations using the Sync voice recognition system, allowing the driver to keep looking at the road.

Mercedes-Benz and Hughes Telematics are working on a service app that will let drivers manage streaming music, locate points of interest or reply to e-mail, all by voice control. Both Mercedes-Benz and Ford will create their own app stores for mobile applications that run in its cars.

A recent TV commercial shows how Onstar can be used to signal your lights, and kill your engine via satellite. This is of course with the expressed purpose of preventing stolen cars, and would never be used in a “big brother” fashion, such as a no-start for late or missed car payments, insurance issues, repossession, bad mood customer service person, etc. That requires a significant amount of trust, that I don’t really possess, even in this open 21st century.

What is the sum of all of this for our industry? I see the writing on the wall for online Reputation Management and I believe we have just seen the tip of this boat-sinking iceberg. I believe this will all lead to new, more and deeper infringement and reputation attacks and those of us in this industry need to be vigilant and roll with these changes. If you want to learn more about Reputation Management, please feel free to use Metamend expertise and we can help you protect or rebuild your good name.