Posted on 08/20/2007 4:29:17 PM PDT by Coleus
Miss New Jersey thought her online photos were private. So did an "American Idol" contestant from Point Pleasant. Amy Polumbo and Antonella Barba instead discovered that their racy just-for-fun photos, posted on members-only sites such as Facebook and MySpace, were accessible to everyone, including would-be blackmailers with modems. But it's not just Jersey girls who fail to realize that deleting images and gossip from Web pages -- or placing them in password-restricted areas -- can't keep them from prying eyes. Many people are at risk because they don't understand how data are stored and shared.
"When you delete it, content doesn't go anywhere," explains Chris Faulkner, CEO of CI Host, a Web-hosting company. "When you put a file on your computer, the physical file is stored on your hard drive, and it creates a file locator. When you hit Delete, the file remains on the hard drive intact. It simply erases the file locator." Maybe you don't know how to find files that don't have file locators, but anybody with a basic grasp of computer forensics does. The data are no safer on a "private" page. "Password-restricted sections are easy to hack," says Faulkner. "There are detailed instructions on many Web sites."
But people need not have hacker skills or access to your hard drive to find uploaded files you intended to keep under wraps. All they have to do is type your name into a search field. Major search engines such as Google and Yahoo routinely index or "spider" as many as 5 billion Web sites. To facilitate speedy results, their servers copy actual content onto the engine's own network. Those cached content "snapshots" aren't updated often enough to prevent material from showing up in a search result even months after it's been deleted from the original Web page, says Faulk ner.
The copied content can be downloaded and saved, and it's all perfectly legal. Faulkner recommends that if you have pictures you don't want viewed by 150 million Web surfers, e-mail them to just one recipient instead of posting them anywhere online. Of course, they can still end up online if that e-mail gets forwarded to the wrong person. According to Faulkner, Microsoft's digital rights management platform for Windows -- currently available to businesses for protecting video and audio content -- eventually will enable regular folks to send e-mails that cannot be forwarded or that automatically self-delete.
However, Faulkner points out, as soon as that option is available there will be ways to get around it. "Technology only takes us so far, and common sense has to take us the rest of the way," he says. That's why it's vital to think beyond the moment. "Amy Polumbo's pictures were taken three years ago, and they weren't so bad, but that was before she had any idea that she would be a public figure," says Faulkner of the state pageant winner who retained her title after the photo controversy. "The Internet has enabled people to go back and haunt you." (Barba was voted off "American Idol" shortly after her online photos were found.)
Because college admissions officers and employers now routinely check out applicants on social-networking sites to get an inside view on their true personalities, high school and college students should never post pictures of themselves playing beer pong or draped suggestively in a back seat, advises Faulkner. "You probably don't want to document that on MySpace and let your employer see it five years later," he says. "You don't want a jealous co-worker to find something on you to prevent you from getting a promotion. Be mindful that any pictures you're taking should keep you in a positive light because they can be up on the Internet in two minutes and stay there forever."
* * * Guarding your digital image
Use good judgment: Digital photos can exist in the online ether for quite a while, and it is very hard to completely "erase" something once it has been online. So be judicious with the images you post to the Web.
Know what's out there: Search for pictures that you, friends or colleagues may have posted online. Make sure they meet with your approval.
Remove questionable images: If you do find a photo that embarrasses you, act to have the picture removed from the site(s) or pages. Contact the acquaintance or person who oversees the site (a site administrator in most cases), and ask him to take down the image.
Use safeguards: E-mail sensitive images directly to the intended viewer. Though not completely hacker proof, several picture sites – such as Kodak gallery.com, Picasa.Google.com and SnapFish.com – offer password protection, allowing only wanted viewers to have access to your images.
Staying private in public: Modify the settings on your social networking site to make photos private – allowing only friends to see those pictures.
Sources: NJ Geek Squad; Chris Faulkner of CI Host.
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Don’t I know it!
All we can do is hope and pray we never get nominated for Supreme Court Justice... ;~)
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