Talking to Profy Users – Privacy

Posted on Jan 16, 2008

by Svetlana Gladkova at 21:03

Here is what Samantha Sun had to suggest to us:

One feature that I most like to see is the ability to ‘private’ a blog. Whether it’s a leveled type permission (show to friends only, show to me only, show to members only, public) or the ability to password the entire blog (or even individual posts!). Not sure if many would agree and want to see this feature (so here’s hoping). I know there’s a visibility feature – but right now it’s all or nothing – visible to public or not.

We here understand that privacy has become a very important issue for web services and we definitely will add lots of tools to help you maintain your privacy at the level that is convenient to you. In the future you will be able to limit who can see your entire blog or separate posts – your friends, your subscribers, all Profy users, anyone.

For the time being we have decided to focus on privacy features that are related to your reading and networking – in your profile you can choose who will see what you read and who will see your friends.

Profy privacy levels

There are several levels of privacy now:

Profy privacy levels - friends, subscribers, anyone

Anyone – in this case anyone will be able to see your friends and feeds you read via the widgets on your blog (currently we do not have a widget for the feeds you read, you can only show blogs from your friends)
Subscribers – all the Profy users
Friends – people you have added to your network as friends
Only me – no one will be able to see the information but yourself

If privacy is important to you and you do not want to share your reading lists and your friends lists with the world, do not forget to choose the appropriate settings in the profile.

I will be looking forward to seeing further feedback from users to publish in this ‘Talking to Profy Users’ series.

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Tags: profy, profy feedback, privacy

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Skyrocket Labs Jan 16, 2008

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Thanks for the add!

Svetlana Gladkova Jan 16, 2008

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Thanks for the add, too and welcome to our team of early users! I hope you will follow my blog here and probably contribute your feedback so that I could reply to it in public. Happy testing!

Skyrocket Labs Jan 16, 2008

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Thanks! :)

Jeff Lefebvre Jan 16, 2008

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Its good to see us developers collaborate! And its even better to see that you guys are replying to our suggestions! good work in that department!

Svetlana Gladkova Jan 16, 2008

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Well, this was the first reason to launch alpha and invite people in - we want to know what you need here and together we will be able to make Profy what bloggers really want it to be. After all, we want people to actually use it - and if it only represents what we think good, chances are many people will not see some features they need.
This is why feedback is of such high importance to us :)

Quiara Jan 18, 2008

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This is a feature I am extremely interested in (and have blogged here recently about, along with a few other suggestions). On my primary blog, I make heavy use of filters - above and beyond the pre-defined set. True, many users will be happy with "work, school, friends, family, public, private," but that is not the case for all users. The ability to customize and fine tune to whom I show what information is a great benefit of my primary blogging platform and the primary reason I am loathe to leave it fully. I have yet to find that level of customization available anywhere else.

Svetlana Gladkova Jan 19, 2008

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Well, you definitely are not an average blogger - very rarely people actually bother at all about the privacy levels for posts. But since privacy concerns have grown so very popular recently, we will need to give this a lot of consideration to make the privacy system more flexible and configurable.

Quiara Jan 19, 2008

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"very rarely people actually bother at all about the privacy levels for posts."

On the contrary, I think people bother with them more now than ever. For instance, it's no longer rare to hear of someone having been fired or chastised for content in one's blog having got back to one's employer. Nor is it rare for employers to google a potential employee. And the field of internet law is only now developing, but privacy and its place on the Web is a growing concern for many people.

Facebook is currently under investigation for improper use and sharing of user information as well as not allowing users to fully delete accounts and information. And that's only one example. Zuckerberg is not being particularly gentlemanly about it, either, which leads many users to dislike him beyond what his company is actually guilty of, but that's another rant entirely.

MySpace and various blogging platforms are coming under inspection regarding whether they are safeguarding the information of children, in particular, since the Web is also full of predatory people.

While it does, yes, seem a contradiction to think that one who would put information on an arguably public vehicle such as the internet at large, it is not actually unreasonable that while we may wish to make use of the social media available to the world, we wish also to control our information and with whom we share it. I think internet privacy is a growing concern for many, many users and will only become moreso.

Svetlana Gladkova Jan 19, 2008

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I definitely know about all the privacy concerns that are currently widely discussed in the blogosphere. In fact, our very own Profy blog has covered these issues a lot. I know about multiple cases when people realize that they should not display publicly what they would not want to hang on their doors at home. But the problem is people realize there is a problem only AFTER something happens to them because of their lack of concern about privacy. This is why I still believe that the majority of users do not really bother about their privacy - they only realize they should be more careful after they face a problem.

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