Paul Colgan, the dangers of the interweb, and Google shows how to do it, with bonus appropriate warning labels

(Above: the dangers of the interweb, by an unknown but appreciated artist).

Over at The Punch, Paul Colgan tries to whip up some FUD about the interweb under the header What does the web think of you?

Colgan gets excited about Personas, a MIT tool, and personal information being widely available on the intertubes, and the steady stream of examples of bizarrely disproportionate consequences arising from the tiny pieces of content added to social networks (next week a compelling story on anonymous uses on the interweb and how they despicably use anonymity to hide from probing journalists).

Throw in Facebook and we're talking about lost jobs and ruined relationships and less obvious effects that take time to emerge.

Of course it wouldn't do when spreading FUD to fail to link to a story showing that Twitter makes you stupid (Facebook 'enhances intelligence' but Twitter 'diminishes it', claims psychologist). Well as they say on Fox, you read the story and you decide, but when I read vague talk of evidence linking TV viewing with ADHD, I get the whiff of sulphur in the air.

Perhaps because of information overload or too much twittering, Colgan goes into such a nanny state mode that he's sure to get the likes of Chris Berg into a lather of excitement:

When the motor car first appeared there were no speed limits, seat belts, indicator lights, or airbags, and only a few loose conventions on the rules of the road. Perhaps in some ways that’s where social networks are at the moment. Driving is made safer not just by enforcement of road rules but through public awareness campaigns on particular dangers - the latest example being the hugely viral campaign on texting while driving.

Funny how it's de rigueur with stories about the dangers of the interweb to include a link to some kind of information on the interweb.

Whatever, Colgan contemplates TV ads warning of the dangers of using the Internet (come on down Susan Greenfield) and the unhappy fate of politicians trying to tell people what they should and shouldn't do online.

Colgan gets particularly excited about Google and the sundry ways it tracks information about its users, including Google images. And it's true Google does have a lot of information, but as usual, in the prosaic, mundane way of things, it's actually the small unnoticed items that should cause genuine concern, rather than generic FUD.

For example, Colgan seems to have missed this email, which was sent to various Google users last Friday:

Hello Google Apps admin,

We wanted to let you know about some important changes around published documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

In a few weeks, documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been explicitly published outside your organization and are linked to from a public website will be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines. There is no change for documents published inside your organization or shared privately.

If you wish to prevent users from publishing documents to the public internet, we now offer an admin control in the Google Apps Control Panel that allows users to continue to 'share documents outside the domain' without allowing them to publish the files to the public Internet. To change this setting, follow these steps:

- Login to your admin control panel
- Select Service Settings > Docs
- Un-check the option 'Users can publish documents to the public internet'

If a user does not want their published Docs to be crawled, then the user must unpublish them by doing the following:

- Go to the 'Share tab'
- For documents and spreadsheets, choose 'Publish as web page'. For presentations choose 'Publish/embed'
- Click on the button that says 'Stop publishing'

For more details, please see this Help Center article: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60781

This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps Team

Well it would be a very exciting change if you wanted your published docs linked to from public websites reaching a much wider audience of people. But perhaps that wasn't your expectation, and perhaps you're not so excited about this very exciting change.

Bizarrely, Google have adopted an opt out, "stop publishing" strategy in relation to published documents, which well might make things easier for them internally, but which will gradually become a privacy issue, as people without the necessary tech savvy will find documents they thought were private, ending up being crawled and widely available.

It should have been an opt in option, with the default position "no publishing" unless the user specifically selects an option that allowed Google to make the documents crawled, public and widely available.

Meantime, if you're a Google service user, time to unlink your documents and make the necessary adjustments in your preferences.

The only real joy in all this is that there's so much information already available, people are swamped by it. The downside is that anyone with a particular axe to grind can now use search techniques to hone in on specific data and specific people.

So while Colgan rabbits on in the usual way, spreading dire warnings about the dangers of journalists using the tubes to get information about you, remember that in Sydney you're also likely to be hit by a Sydney bus. Or miss a Sydney train because they've stopped running for the moment.

Even so, I feel the need to be very proper. It isn't just an arbitrary Google you have to worry about, so here are a few public service warnings. Remember the interweb is a dangerous form of self-medication.

People, use the interwebs with caution. Store in a cool, dry place, keep out of the reach of children, shake well before using, take strictly as directed, preferably take with plenty of water, crackers or a small meal, and do not drink milk or eat dairy products or use alcoholic beverages when using. It almost goes without saying that the interweb is not to be taken by mouth, unless you like to flirt with a mouse, with consequent potential for electrocution.

Please consult your doctor for further advice. Regrettably unless you live in a state with socialized medicine, this might cost you, but hey caveat emptor.