Don't step on the perimeter, don't touch the user's privacy minefield

Previously, iOS application American Around me had been forced off the app store. They use Foursquare's location information and Facebook's public information to help lonely otaku find women around them and then access their information, even their Facebook contacts, photos, Check-in Records, and so on. But in fact, these are all information that users acquiesce to Foursquare and Facebook.

But why, to the American Around me here, will make people feel so "abnormal"? because This is how they use this information to make users more aware of the risks of exposing their personal data. In other words, they actually stepped on the border.

　　On the one hand users publish a large amount of personal data online, but on the other hand they are unwilling to be exposed to privacy. This sounds plausible, but it's contradictory. Because the information they release is, in other words, privacy. Kevin Mahaffey, CTO and co-founder of Lookout Mobile Security, said: "If you don't know someone (or someone who doesn't) can get access to your information that's beyond what you want them to know, Then it will make you feel violated. The

Now the operator of the social platform is using this invisible "privacy line". Because only these so-called privacy data, operators can provide users with more intimate and convenient service. They will try to avoid letting users think of the word "privacy," using a variety of fancy features to cover up access to user data. So when people enjoy sharing their location information, life details, photos and so on on a social platform, they are unaware of the possibility that a malicious person might snoop around in a hidden place and record the information. It is the user's neglect of social products that allows the latter to develop on a large scale.

The biggest mistake American Around me is to stimulate the user's most sensitive "privacy" minefield. There is a serious teaser from the name itself. The home page of a variety of promotional language to make people think of the unhealthy things. The application itself is no problem, just to help users make new friends. But they use these provocative statements as a marketing tool, attract a lot of people with bad tendencies, and finally stepped through the public psychological acceptable bottom line. So this application was first cut off by the Foursquare API, and eventually forced by the app Store.

Future users will certainly continue to publish a lot of personal data, and social platform operators have to do is to balance the power:

-let users know that their public information is likely to be browsed by strangers;

-Establish a public level limit on the information published by the user, that is, to support the disclosure of certain information only to some designated users;

-For those with reservations, let the user have the right to know and the right to be heard.

Eliminate the "I am in the dark" state, to create a healthy, equal network environment.