Monthly Archives: October 2011

Social: Good news for burglars?

It won’t have escaped your attention that everything needs to be social these days. I imagine design teams huddled in dingy rooms, having been told by senior management that they can’t emerge until they’ve made their app or web site ‘more social’. 

The culture is to make ‘sharing’ a default option. Since we know that people tend to go with the flow and accept the defaults, this makes it less likely that people will stop and question what they’re sharing. 

And there are risks with this kind of behaviour. 

For example, by announcing your location on Foursquare, you’re also announcing that you’re not at home, which is good news for burglars. Then I came across this today after buying a CD player on Amazon. 

Amazon

You’ll see that Amazon are encouraging me to share my purchase on Facebook and Twitter. 

Enlarged view:

Screen2
I doubt that someone will want to burgle me for a £30 CD Player but if I’d just bought an expensive digital camera or a computer, it might be different.

Hidden controls

I’m all for supporting free software, but I don’t think it’s right to trick people into doing it.

I came across this dialog box in Vuze. Where would you click if you didn’t want to donate?

Pic001
If you’re still stuck, look to the left of the mouse cursor.