22 December 2009

Happy December everyone!

In exactly 3 days it will be Christmas. If you have kids, just remember to wrap Santa's presents with different paper (a tip from your friendly, neighborhood Mowaffaq Tahir :). Ok, moving on, it's time to present this week's Moment of Zen. For our moment we'll be looking at Netflix, and a new lawsuit the online movie rental company will be combating soon.

I'm guessing at least some of you reading this have a Netflix account. If so then you should know the company is being sued for sharing private information with other users, and anyone on the internet who's interested. If the lawsuit proves successful, it would mean Netflix violated fair-trade laws, and federal privacy law, not to mention their own privacy policy. A trifecta, indeed.

This all started with a contest, where Netflix gave 50,000 contestants an opportunity to make the company's recommendation algorithm better. A honorable enough pursuit, however, it's within the execution where things get muddled. In order for the contestants to develop the algorithm, they were provided data from 480,000 customers which contained - movie ratings, date of rating, a unique ID number, and movie info.

Ok, so no names were provided and it appears anonymity was protected. Unfortunately, this didn't turn out to be the case. Here's a direct quote on how users were able to be found with the information provided: "So it wasn’t surprising that just weeks after the contest began, two University of Texas researchers — Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov — identified several NetFlix users by comparing their “anonymous” reviews in the Netflix data to ones posted on the Internet Movie Database website. Revelations included identifying their political leanings and sexual orientation."

Yikes! The lawsuit was presented by a Jane Doe, an 'in-the-closet' lesbian who's afraid she could potentially be outed due to this information. I have to say researching this story taught me how personal people take their movie renting, and rating habits. The real kicker is that the information is now out on the public web for marketers to get a hold of, and you can bet they're going to use this information for financial gain.

I'm not a mind reader but I truly believe Netflix wasn't trying to be nefarious in this. They were however irresponsible with how they handled information, and when you're a corporation that big handling private information should be handled with complete discretion. I am glad someone has stood up and held them accountable, as this could be a good lesson for them moving forward.

On a personal level, I honestly could care less if it's my info which was used. Here's my Top 5 Favorite Movies of All Time: Braveheart, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Batman (1989), The Incredibles, and The Lion King. If you can devise some kind of marketing strategy, or discover something on a personal level from my favorite list, then I applaud you. I hope everyone enjoyed their Moment of Zen today, and have a great holiday.