Virtual Responsibility

Posted by shush

January 21, 2015

People who are given the responsibility to handle a whole lot of information about something has the duty to discern and distinguish which information are “share-able” and which are totally “unshare-able”. These information may be in the form of digital content, in print, or verbal.

Here are some examples of these kinds of people:
- When you are in charge of collecting application forms for any purpose that contains personal information about people
- When you are an encoder, into data retrieval, or has access to any kind of database
- When you are a guard of any type
- When you are a household employee
- or any type of employee who handles a lot of paperwork containing personal information
- When you are an employer or high up in the organizational structure who has access to the personal information of all your employees or subordinates

Why is it important that these people are capable of discerning and distinguishing “share-able” and “unshare-able” information?

Because letting the wrong people find out about personal information can cause a lot of trouble and even a lot of pains.

If you wanted to stalk someone, and you know from whom to get personal information about that someone, you can stalk just about anyone.

Let’s say, you wanted to hack into someone’s cellphone or broadband connection. If the employee handling these types of information in any telecommunications company is not good in keeping such information private, they could easily store such information in their personal digital devices, then any person with the right amount of money or even just a few bottles of liquor can ask the employee the contact information of anyone. Even the residential and work addresses can be extracted from the employee.

It gets worse if a guard or a household employee would divulge to anyone who asks them, the daily activities, documents, or conversations they overhear of their employers. It may be in the form of a simple conversation, or reach a level where actual disguised relationships are formed, like textmates and stuff, just to gain some information. Malicious people and even stalkers could easily inflict some serious damage to their employers’ properties or even their employers’ lives.

But the absolute worse scenario is when someone with access to whole databases would sell these information to other people or sabotage them unmindful of the consequences.

Here are some simple and extreme circumstances.

- If a customer service employee collects the names, phone numbers, and addresses of each person who files a complaint and illegally sells the information to some tele-marketing entity not caring what the tele-marketing entity would do with the information

- If a “property custodian” sells the details of owners of properties of everyone within a certain geographical location to a person who is into land-grabbing or property grabbing

- If an employer or some other authoritative figure sells the personal information of all the employees they could access, to someone who they are not aware is an economic saboteur’s front

- If a school’s database administrator sells the roster of students’ campus residential information to a group that is into pornographic videos of students taken using equipment capable of taking videos at long distances, or even something as simple as photos of students super-imposed into other people’s bodies for use in pornography

- If a website’s database administrator would sell the email addresses and credit card information of their customers to groups who are into credit card fraud or online identity theft

All these circumstances spell one word – trouble.

People, whether they hold a daunting job that handles a whole population’s personal information, or a smaller one that handles even just a small family’s information should be mindful of the fact that the information they are handling are not for public knowledge all the time.

Sometimes, others forget that when they talk about other people, not everyone who is listening have good intentions. Sometimes, the others who are listening or are willing to pay any amount to get private information have vengeful or criminal intentions. And if they give away the private information that was entrusted to them implicitly or explicitly, whether for free during a small conversation or for a price, they are also putting someone else’s life in danger. And although they can just walk away from it thinking that no one would find out they were the ones responsible for giving away the information, the fact still remains that there would have been no wrongdoing or crime if they didn’t give away the private information.

This is something we take for granted just because we are everyday people and not public figures. It doesn’t matter if you are a simple person whom no one else knows except the people at home and at work. You are entitled to your privacy.

Here’s the simplest example I know that is an everyday thing people go through but a big privacy hazard.

When you go to a certain place that requires you to write your name, address, contact number, and signature on a log book to enter the place or get some paperwork from, your privacy is put on the line. Why? Because anyone who is also entering the place or getting some paperwork from it could easily place their cellphones with cameras on top of the log book, take a photo of all the names, addresses, contact numbers and signatures on the currently visible page while writing down their own name and other information. Then voila! They have the contact information of a whole page’s worth of names. And if there are any important person’s names there with their real signature included, then anyone can have a database of signatures that can be used for forgeries and could easily be used to fake someone else’s identity.

Personally, I never write down my contact number or address in any log book. Also, I have an alternative signature, which is unusable as a valid signature in any legal document, that I use when required on such types of log books.

It would be good if the log book would have only one line at a time that is visible to the person going to write on it. Sort of like covering the whole page with a bond paper and having just a horizontal slit cut into it enough to make a line in the page visible for someone to write on while hiding all the other information on the page. But I have never seen any log book like that so far.

There is private information, and there is public information. It is not acceptable to have your private information available for public access. If we could keep this in mind in whatever we do and whatever type of work we are in, then we could possibly lessen the occurrence of other people’s pains and even the occurrence of crimes.

Revising how we ask information from other people using a simple log book would be a good start.

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