It is not new that there is an explosion of services around the web that can play a role in a user-based mashup. I won’t count them all, because this will change after this note has been written. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just have a look to the Services connected by ShareThis or Ping.fm.
Many of these services will raise their own privacy questions/concerns. But, anyway, your questions may fall into these two categories:
- How this Service Provider will manage my data.
- Which are the Risks I’m facing on my use (publishing/sharing/…) of this service.
The Service Provider
Here you will have to remember that even though a Service doesn’t cost money, it doesn’t mean that it is free. The trade might be your data, and here we need to recall that “data” is not only the object of the Service, but also the hole context.
For example, in an e-mail service: the object is the Message and the context your Address Book, your Relationships Network taken from your conversations, the Time-Line, your Connection Calendar, your Activity Rate, Frequency, your Read Habits, Focus and Interests, etc.
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