The Ethics of Cyber Sleuthing

Sometime in May or June, I received a Facebook friend request from a woman named Sharon. She seems attractive for an older woman, and I'm sure she's nice, but for the life of me, I don't have any clue who she is. We had a few friends in common, according to her profile, and I kept meaning to send her a message asking who she was, but I forgot and put it off, leaving her in friend request limbo, and eventually the request disappeared.

Then in early July, I received another request from her. This time, I sent her a short, but polite note, reading:

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble placing you. How do I know you?"

A small conversation came out of this.

"There must be some mistake. I don't know you either."
"Then why did you friend request me? This is the second time you've done it."
"I haven't seen your name before. I've had this Facebook account closed down until yesterday when I opened it back up to check on some of the groups I belong to."

She promptly deleted her account.

It was weird behavior, but I looked past it and got over it. Just another crazy old lady trying to keep up with technology and modern youth culture. We should applaud her for her diligent attempts. She could have been nicer with her responses, but whatever.

Fast forward another two weeks, and I received a THIRD friend request from this woman. I was beginning to get a little irritated. Again, I sent her a message:
"Once again, I do not know who you are. This is the third time you've friend requested me. Please identify yourself."

She responded with a message that I interpreted to be surprisingly rude and impatient, given the circumstances.

"Dan, And this is now the third time that I'm truthfully telling you that I do not know how that is happeneing any more than you do. I'm telling you the truth. No matter how many times you ask, I can't give you an explanation because I don't know how it's happening. The only thing I can think of to do is just ignore the friend request. Or just block messages from my name."

It's important to understand that when I asked her to "identify" herself, I wasn't necessarily asking her to tell me how I know her. I would have been happy with a quick response outlining the basics: what you do, where you live, if you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. That sort of thing. But instead I got anger and frustration. It was like she was blaming me for her lack of internet savvy. So I did what anyone would do, given the situation: I googled her.

Back in the day, googling someone was the simple act of going to Google and searching someone's name. As time has passed and technology as grown, I feel that the term "googling" has evolved, becoming something more akin to internet sleuthing. There is an uncanny amount of information on the internet, and far too much of it is accessible to anyone with a most basic knowledge. We touched upon this in a limited form with the whole Megan's Law entry, but now it's time to delve deeper.

*** Note ***

I wrote this entry, at least up until this point, back in early August. The problem was that I hit an ethical wall. How much detail can you give about internet sleuthing (stalking) before you've given too much information? I mean, everything I found was available to anyone with an internet connection and the basic information I gained from her Facebook account. Even that much is negligible. She had sent me a friend request, granting me access to all of her page's information, but anyone doing a search for "Sharon [last name]" would have come up with her name, the fact that she lives in Pittsburgh (or is at least in the Pittsburgh network), and a small image of her. From there, the image's URL needs only one letter to be changed to be shown at a larger size. So now you have name, city, and picture. Have I said too much by sharing this information? If I go on to say that I typed her name into Google, is that crossing a line? What if I actually link to Google?

This whole issue came back to mind today, nearly two months after I began the post, because I read an article about a security flaw in Adobe's Flash server software that allows internet users to download and save movies from Amazon's Video On Demand service for free. The article describes the flaw and explains in layman's terms how it works. It makes mention, by name, of an additional program that is necessary to take advantage of the flaw and lists the URL of a page that details the step by step instructions of how to use the program. At what point, if any, does the article go too far? Should Amazon take action against the website publishing the article for assisting would-be pirates? I got the link through the feed on my Gmail page, does that mean Google should also be held responsible?

I suppose there is a distinct difference between something like enabling/assisting piracy and enabling/assisting cyber sleuthing, but where does one draw the line? The websites I used were all common knowledge and free to use. By plugging her name and city into one site, I was able to find her address. From plugging her address into another site, I was able to find a picture of her house and the price of it, as well as the fact that it was listed as being sold in 2002 for $1. This simply means there was a transfer of ownership, and a single search cleared the mystery by leading to an obituary for her husband, who passed away in August of 2001.* Other searches gave our mystery woman a career. Surprisingly, her job history was the hardest item to pinpoint. The internet left strange, inexplicable gaps, but her Facebook page further bolstered the information that could be found.

Now, I've given a lot of general information here, but at this point she could still be anyone. The scary thing is, I only used three search sites to get this information. One of them, as I've already alluded to, is Google. A second was an internet white pages search. The last was the ever helpful Allegheny County Assessments page.**

I've kept the one page secret, as it really serves as the missing link. I feel like this is enough to release me from my ethical chains. What do you think? Have I gone too far, or not far enough? At what point does it go from innocent to creepy? Does the fact that she contacted me first have any bearing on the situation? Let's hear from the audience on this one, and especially the MLIS students and ethicists out there. Does your Information Sciences training touch upon this sort of stuff at all? I know there's at least one medical ethicist in my readership, and while this is out of your field a bit, I'm interested in hearing your views considering the high premium the medical community places upon confidentiality. Can a person freely share information that is freely found on the internet? At what point does it become a matter of personal responsibility?



*And as information tends to lead to more information, the obituary named his children, his former profession, as well as his alma mater.

**Honestly, whoever thought of putting the assessments information online, you are a god in my eyes. I remember when I first discovered the site and rushed through the entire list of people I knew, searching out each and every home. It was easier then, as you could search by name as well as address. They've since done away with the name only search, probably a smart move on their part.