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The Golden Rule

By Ophelia Chong
July 20, 2010
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branchout.jpg

Not in my backyard, or to be more precise, not in my Facebook.

I received an invite to join BranchOut, a new application on Facebook that allows me to see where my friends work, where friends of friends work, and to expand my career network.

To join, they wanted the following:
1. Access to my basic information, which includes my list of friends.
2. They want permission to send me direct emails
3. They want to Post to my Wall
4. Access my data ANY TIME, even when I am not using the application
5. Access my profile information (education and work history)
6. Access my friend's information (location, education and work history)

If alarm bells haven't gone off by now, then maybe the fact that you are opening the door to your friends' information even if they have their profiles set on "Friends Only" should cause you some concern.

I am a believer in separation of Church and State, or in this case Personal and Public. I have all my work history on my Linkedin, and I don't see a reason to mesh Facebook and Linkedin into one large swirling mass of "who's on first?".

The information requested by BranchOut is more extensive than say "Mafia Wars", which asks for Access to my "name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I've shared with everyone." And permission to send me a direct email. Mafia Wars has 17,910,064 monthly active users. I am not a user of Mafia Wars, but a few of my Facebook friends are. BranchOut, which only debuted yesterday has 97 active users. I can understand that the pitch behind BranchOut is to gather relevant data for you to search through for work, but you are allowing them to enter your friend's data without your friend's permission to do so. Is it worth it to shill yourself on a site that is built for social not business networking?

Facebook has enough problems as is with the Privacy settings, but to compound the problem with applications like BranchOut which plays on the idea of getting work through your friends by data mining you and your network through a backdoor. By clicking on their page in Facebook to "Terms of Service" and "Privacy" only brings you back to the "Download the Application" page. Quite irritating when you want to know what they are going to do with your data. Going to their website, there are no links to either Terms of Service or Privacy, the page image just takes you right back to the Facebook Application page. So am I going to trust blindly this site with my and my friends' information? I don't think so.

BranchOut's good intentions to help you find work is admirable, but the approach of allowing a spider to grab data without your friends' permission is misguided. There is a place for applications like BranchOut, but as we march forward to guard our already compromised private/public lives, perhaps an application that keeps our secrets is more in tune with what we need today.

As a rule before you add an application on Facebook, read carefully what you are allowing the application to do with your information. If you are comfortable with it, then go ahead, but you might also be opening the door to all of your friends' information as well.

As in offline and online life, just remember the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Image: Ophelia Chong/ Uneven Odds

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