Privacy statements are usually hidden and are changed frequently

Almost all sites insist on making their registration process quick and simple. Therefore, they prefer to keep users from spending time on privacy statements. Here at Ascentum, we try to find a balance – between simplicity and ensuring that engagement website users take the time to read through and understand the fine print. Exposing users to our privacy statements is one of the key steps during registration.

What most sites also mention in their privacy statement is that they reserve the right to change their privacy statement without prior notice. And with all social media sites releasing new features almost every other day to keep up with the competition, it becomes a necessity to revisit privacy and settings as frequently as possible to keep your information safe.

It is among Ascentum’s best practices to not modify privacy statements after a website has been launch. In rare cases where we do need to make any changes to our privacy statement, we either follow it up with a clear and visible message on our home page and/or send out an email to our participants notifying them of the recent change.

Most mainstream users typically ignore privacy settings

In his book Simple and Usable, Giles Colborne outlined 3 main types of internet users. Experts, who are willing to spend time on a new product and its features and love to customize their products; Willing Adopters, who are tempted to use something sophisticated but uncomfortable with something entirely new; and finally Mainstreamers, who just use a product to get their job done.

Since there aren’t too many people who fall in to the first two groups, most sites are designed with Mainstreamers in mind. What that means is that site registration fields have been simplified and reduced to bare minimum. And newly registered accounts start off with preset privacy settings. Proper use of privacy settings is dependent on user skill set.

Ascentum approaches its website designs with all three users in mind and ensures no one is left in the dark based on their online skill sets. Along with our registration process presenting privacy statements clearly, our submission form feature further allows users to choose whether they would like to make their entries public or keep them private and only for analysis.

Privacy policies of a site are compelled by law of the country the site is hosted in

Back in 2009, Facebook had to readdress their privacy settings after they were found to be in conflict with the Canadian Privacy Law. Similarly, LinkedIn privacy policies are bound by California Government Law which may not necessarily agree with information privacy laws in other countries.

Ascentum counters these privacy conflicts by hosting all web sites locally. Our servers reside in Canada and come equipped with SSL encryption by default to ensure maximum data privacy.

So why share your information at all?

Answer: Return on Investment (ROI), i.e. visibility, contacts, connections, better product deals, etc..

• In the case of Facebook, your ROI could be connection with friends, coworkers or family.
• In the case of LinkedIn, your ROI could be professional contacts, following your favourite brands and companies, career advancement.
• By participating online for Ascentum, your ROI could be ability to enable change and make a difference in the field you care about most. Whether it is a change in the workplace, schools, healthcare or your own community.

Conclusion

Here at Ascentum, we ensure that our process of dealing with user-related information abides with Canadian legislation. However, when it comes to popular social media, the best practice in order to ensure your information privacy is to use common sense. At the end of the day, users control what they share on the web regardless of privacy policies set by social media platforms.

-Salman Shakeel-

They are also powerful tools that can make in-person dialogues awesome – both in terms of generating shared information and giving participants a more engaging experience.  

And, researchers estimate that there are over 5 million Canadians with Smartphones.  They are becoming more common as tools for business and/or personal use.

Earlier this week, we read a great blog by Dwayne at LearningCycle.ca called “35 Ways to Use an iPhone in a Workshop”.  Some are there for fun but there are quite a few thoughtful ways to use iPhones or other Smartphones in workshop.

Here are our favourite 5:

Camera: Use it to snap pictures of group activities, flip charts, and other knowledge products participants create during small group breakouts.  These can be analyzed and included in reports, as well as shared online.

Video: Use it to capture the “story” of the day – the opening, group interactions, individual conversations, and even personal “what I learned” or reflections interviews at the end of the event.  This could be easily edited and kept as a time capsule, shared with participants only or posted online for the broader community experience the event as well.

Twitter: With an LCD display and active search enabled, use it to ask participants questions and have them @message or DM replies.  140 characters isn’t much, but it can help participants express their ideas concisely!  (You can read an earlier blog with more tips for using Twitter at in-person events here)

Wikipedia app or Google search: Use them to check facts, conduct quick research and bring additional knowledge to play to inform deliberations and make they are truly evidence-informed.

Networking: Use it to help participants build professional networks or stay in touch.  On the free Bump App for iPhones, participants can “bump” fists with their devices and exchange contact information wirelessly.  It’s as easy as shaking hands… only more fun.

A big thanks to @learningcycle for a great blog that got us thinking…

Ellis Westwood & Stephan Telka

The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook

Matt’s images are complex but they show the gradual trend for Facebook default settings to be more public and the complexity of sharing different information with different groups of people. Its important to understand that these are the default settings and many people have chosen to define their own settings and comfort levels.

Facebook has recently announced and is currently rolling-out simpler privacy settings for all users. The general trend is to allow the user to opt-into new services instead of enabling them by default. Its important to learn Facebook and apply the same principals when engaging individuals. Theses principals are:

1/Inform the User

Outline exactly what information you need from them and how the information will be used. On my websites this is done through a privacy policy but may need to be updated for Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media websites.

2/ Explicit Consent

When you launch a new initiative or service that effect privacy or personal information, request explicit consent on the new usage of personal information. It is generally not acceptable to automatically assume everyone wants to participate or share personal information.

3/ Keep it Simple

Facebook has learned that by adding multiple options and controls they confused the user and may it hard for users to understand what they were sharing.

4/ Listen and Respond Quickly

Problems may arise where information is disclosed unintentionally and effect user data. Respond quickly and effectively to these situation and respect the user’s involved, where possible inform them of the situation.

Facebook has achieved incredible growth by allowing users to share personal information with their friends. They recognize that users will share more personal and use the service more effectively when they are confident of their privacy.

- Colin Smillie -

The population growth shouldn’t be a surprise at almost 300% last year.  The age breakdown is a little different but there are a lot of children missing and facebook is demographically ageist with no specifications for 65+.  The city stats are interesting too.  New York seems surprisingly low as a proportion based on their legendary iphone challenges but Philly and Dallas are rapidly approaching complete penetration.

You make your own call, but clearly the numbers can no longer be ignored.  Combine this with a recent assessment that a facebook fan has been valued at $3.60 each means that PM’s facebook page is worth $114,080 (31,689 fans).  How do you account for that in your Elections Canada campaign expenses!?

The Bad

With the current round of changes Facebook Applications going to take a hit initially in terms of traditional user engagement tools.  Facebook Notifications will be discontinued soon, instead Facebook Applications will be expected to communicate with users via Email or the Application Newsfeed Items. Facebook Invites and Requests will also be moving to the Facebook Inbox and won’t have a prominent screen location.

These changes are consistent with Facebook’s direction of forcing user application engagement into the Facebook Newsfeed/Stream.  Given the level of Application spam we’ve seen from Facebook Games and other noisy application this seems to be the correct direction to maintain an engaged user base.

With more and more communication moving to the Facebook Inbox a number of changes are planned to provide better filtering on communication.  Facebook has provided the following preview of how Invites will be filtered in the new Inbox:

Profile Changes

Facebook Profile boxes and Extended Profile Information ( rarely used ) will be discontinued but users can still manually add a Tab on their profile for their favourite Facebook Applications.  And example of the Facebook Profile Tab, using the Where I’ve been Application:

The Facebook Tab functionality has been available for while but has been widely under used by users.  We’re not expecting this to change unless Facebook provides a greater push to educate users to provide tools to make adding a Facebook Tab easier.

The Good

Facebook Application Newsfeed items will be moved to the new Application or Game Bashboards.   An example of the Game Dashboard:

The Dashboard will show your activity in applications you’ve used recently.  Your Friends recently used Applications will also be displayed, if there privacy settings allow them.  A smaller Application Directory will also be included on the Dashboard with popular Applications.  One of the most engaging aspects of the Facebook Application Dashboard is the addition of small notification “counters” indicating activity within the Dashboards.  This is a similar process to the iPhone and other platforms to provide subtle notice of activity that the user can investigate further.

We’re expecting that the separate Application Dashboard should allow Applications to engage more directly with users and avoid a lot of the noise associated with the Facebook Games.  The main unknown is how quickly and how often users will use the Application Dashboards.

Facebook Pages

In this round of updates, the Facebook Pages have received very little in the way of new functionality but maybe the most telling is the lack of change.  Facebook Pages can still issue items into the Facebook Newsfeed/Stream and continue to be a very powerful tool to engage Facebook users.  Even with the stock functionality of Facebook Page it can very engaging and it can also host Facebook Applications as specialized Tabs for Contests or News Letter information.

Facebook Connect Additions

Facebook continues to add more functionality to Facebook Connect and provide the ability to use Facebook functionality on external sites.   Facebook Chat can now be integrated into external websites and instant messaging services.  The Facebook Translations engine can also be used on external websites to provide translation functionality similar to what is available inside of Facebook.

Facebook’s roadmap also has commitments to increased support for Facebook Connect through what they are calling the Open Graph API.  The intent behind the Open Graph API is to allow external websites to duplicate much of the function of their Facebook Page on their own website.  In this way the engagement they have with users can be same inside Facebook or on their own website.

- Colin Smillie -

Facebook has just released a brand new privacy policy that responds to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s concerns about protecting personal information. And that’s great news for all of us.

The fact that Facebook responded so quickly and publicly to the Commissioner shows that Facebook takes privacy seriously.

An easy-to-understand privacy statement… for real!?
To put it simply, the new Facebook privacy policy is brilliant. It’s written in plain English (no sneaky fineprint or lawyer words) so that anyone can read and understand it. And, Facebook actually invited comments on a draft of the new policy from members of its user community and received 1000s, so people have had a voice in helping shape it.

3rd party apps and your privacy
Part of Facebook’s success has been that other companies have developed mini-applications, like games or quizzes, to provide users with a more fun and engaging experience. Some of these 3rd party apps gather personal information; for example to post a status update to a user’s friends about a new high-score they’ve got.

The new privacy policy clarifies that Facebook requires all developers of these apps to respect people’s privacy settings and places strict limits on how user information is collected, stored and used.

We all need to play a more active role in protecting our privacy
Ultimately, Facebook’s new policy reminds us that we each need to play a more active role in protecting our own personal information. Facebook can’t stop your friends from sharing any embarrassing Halloween party pictures elsewhere online if they choose to!

It’s up to each of us to choose the privacy settings we are comfortable with. To get started, select the “privacy” option under settings in your Facebook account! You can decide who can have access to what information.

- Ellis Westwood -