[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox Privacy Principles

[Mike Macgirvin]

Here's the issue, and apologies but Friendika's hosting service is 
having some serious database issues at the moment... and may be down.

- You have a "group" (aspect,circle, whatever)
- You send this group a private message.

All is well. However if your group includes *any* people from networks 
with no privacy mechanisms (e.g. status.net, Twitter, etc.), your 
privacy expectations have been compromised. Your private message may now 
be visible on public portals and visible in public search results.

There are several ways your privacy could leak once you cross network 
boundaries, unless all said networks are aligned in privacy principles.

For instance we've also encountered holes (this time it was our fault), 
where a profile wall was "hidden" on Facebook, but we weren't aware of 
it due to limitations in the Facebook API. So we imported this stuff 
onto the Friendika wall where it leaked. (We now have a workaround, and 
can completely close off the Friendika wall also.) Previously we 
expected the privacy rights of the messages themselves to determine 
visibility, but there may be privacy rights attached to some web page on 
another system which are not reflected in the messages contained therein.

These are just issues you should be aware of. We try our best to warn 
somebody when there is a potential privacy violation, but people are 
finicky and just expect to be able to communicate privately with anybody 
on any network and for everything to just work.

The real world is a bit more complicated.