(go ahead, click it). You’ll get a zip file
of every item he has ever added, rated or
reviewed. You’ll also get every photo he has
ever uploaded to Oink.
Was Oink 100% public or were there private conversation/shares? If everything on Oink was public (like a public blog or Twitter before direct messages), then it doesn't seem like a big deal. It's just making it easier to snoop. Otherwise, wow.
I agree, if everything was public then it doesn't seem like a big deal but they still should of made measures to assure that only the user gets their data in exported format.
Privacy is not about whether something is public or not. It's about being in control of your data.
This is the fundamental misunderstanding that seems to be rampant especially in countries like the US that lack basic privacy regulations.
Just because information was public, doesn't mean that using it in certain ways without the permission of the person involved is not a breach of privacy.
I seriously doubt this was a type of usages Oink users explicitly agreed to (and no, burying such provisions in the small print doesn't make it legal).
>Privacy is not about whether something is public or not. It's about being in control of your data.
Um.. that's not what the word means. It's possible for you to not be in control of your data but still have it be private, and vice versa.
Google: Define: Privacy
The state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.
The state of being free from public attention.
That's what the dictionary says.
>I seriously doubt this was a type of usages Oink users explicitly agreed to (and no, burying such provisions in the small print doesn't make it legal).
Depends on how the site worked. For instance, look at Twitter - everything is public by default unless you go to your profile and check a box that says "Make my account private", and then nobody can follow you.
Are you saying it would be a breach of privacy for Twitter to provide a zipfile containing all of my tweets I've ever made publicly? Which any person could get anyways by searching @myname site:twitter.com ?
Privacy has a way broader social and legal meaning than the dictionary definition of the word.
Narrowing it down to a oneliner from a dictionary is not particularly constructive.
And yes, I would say if Twitter did that, it could well be a breach of privacy. It would almost certainly be a breach of the law in most Western countries. Just because you have access to the data, doesn't mean you can just do with it whatever you like without the consent of the owner. Once that zip-file spreads, making the Twitter account private becomes pointless.
Why do so many people think copyright is something perfectly logical, but privacy protection, which has much more to do with protecting the rights of individuals, is something weird?
> It would almost certainly be a breach of the law in most Western countries.
Twitter already let's you download someone's tweet in a .json file. Are you saying that twitter is almost certainly breaking the law? Or is it something specifically evil with the .zip file?
We're not saying you should "just do with it whatever you like". What they're specifically doing is making it publicly available. Which it already was, because that's the definition of what public means. As the previous poster pointed out.
Public domain is not protected by copyright. Most countries (though not all) explicitly differentiates the laws of what's public and what's copyrighted. Usually, both are mutually exclusive.
>Privacy has a way broader social and legal meaning than the dictionary definition of the word.
Something made public and put on display for the world to see isn't and never was private by any possible logical definition.
>Once that zip-file spreads, making the Twitter account private becomes pointless.
And? Unlike the EU, there isn't such a thing as right to be forgotten in the USA, and for that matter, nor do I think it should be. Be careful what you put online and it will never be a problem.
I'd hate to be operating any kind of social service in the EU, when a single unauthenticated letter could completely destroy a good chunk of any social network.
I never read the Oink privacy policy because I assumed everything was public. It's kind of weird that they let you download anybodies -public- data, but in order for it to be a breach of privacy, it would have to be private in the first place.
Wouldn't take much for someone to whip up a script to parse the search results to build a list of usernames to bounce off of. There's also a fair amount of item-specific data too.
Well, if there's a silver lining to this it's a good thing the development team behind that product isn't going anywhere where data privacy breaches could be a big deal.
I noticed this when I did my export as well, but when I saw the data, it was only public information. But makes for a good headline for this blogger it seems.
I never used Oink, but was there an option when creating an account to make it a private account, limiting access to certain types of data to certain users? If not, isn't everyone's uploads, reviews, pictures, etc. already available for anyone to see? Even if this is true, this still shouldn't be happening.
Can you going to a restaurant and see your friends pull out their iPhone to snap photos of everything they eat and drink? I'd want to smack them at the back of their head.
Good riddance to products like Oink, if it fosters habits like Rose's, if his photos are anything to go by.
Btw, what was Oink about? I'd never heard of it before it was shut down and this Google story, so it's hard to find out anything about what the app actually was. They seem to be getting a lot more attention post-shutdown than pre.
If they were going to release all the data they should have said so.
They didn't release anything new - all the data was already accessible from their website, and users were aware of that. They just made a zip out of it.
Do you mean you changed the title? I certainly didn't as I'm now blocked from editing the title of my own submission. Also, the post seems to still be flagged.
