Doc Searls writes:
Look up privacy trade-offs on Google and you get more than 150,000,ooo results. The assumption almost always is that privacy is something one can trade away. Many also assume that privacy trading is with marketers and advertisers, which are often in cahoots with social media such as Twitter, FourSquare and Blippy.
I don’t think this has to be so.
One example of a trade-off story is this one on public radio’s Marketplace program, which I ran this evening. It begins with the case of Shea Sylvia, a FourSquare user who was creeped out by an unwelcome call from a follower who knew her location. Marketplace’s Sally Herships says,
There are millions of Sylvias out there, giving away their private information for social reasons. More and more, they’re also trading it in for financial benefits, like coupons and discounts. Social shopping websites like Blippy and Swipely let shoppers post about what they buy. But first they turn o.ver the logins to their e-mail accounts or their credit card numbers, so their purchases can be tracked online.
Read more on Project VRM