How a CIO (Almost) Released Personal Data

I wrote a draft post last week that will never see the light of day.  In it, I sought to pay tribute to someone I respect very much for their intellect and world experience.  When I started my CIO gig, they imparted the following maxims:

Think Defensively
Think Deceitfully
Proceed with Caution – at All Times

It is good stuff that promotes great questions and discussion - I have had them printed out at my desk since Day 1.  In the post, I wrote a couple of points on each bullet, and thought I had something that would honor them and their contributions to me.  I emailed it over, and hoped that they would like how they were portrayed.

I received a response the next morning that was nothing short of a stern dressing down.  I learned that, in my zeal to bring the story to life, I dropped in what I thought were some innocuous details:  their age, gender, lineage, prior employer, general location, last name and work experience. I thought each detail helped make the narrative better.  However, my detailed narrative turned out to be exactly what they were warning me to avoid.

The person about whom I wrote the post wanted none of their personal information shared unnecessarily with anyone.  Yet many of us willingly share the information mentioned above on Facebook or LinkedIn every day.  Why do we feel the need to communicate so much personal information that can be used in all kinds of negative ways?  If you have 1,000 Facebook friends or 500+ LinkedIn contacts, do you really think about protecting yourself from others?  Before you jump on Chatroulette, does it occur to you that you could be recorded by anyone on the other end?  Is this dangerous oversharing or a harmless attempt at making the connections that make us human?

I’m as guilty as anyone, and this experience served as a wake up call for me.   Increasingly, we don’t get a choice when governments, banks, or social networks lose what they promise was secure. In the areas we do control, such as blog posts, we do get those choices, and I think the maxims above serve to inform those choices.

So Person X, thanks once again for teaching me.  Taking that lesson to heart, I hope, will be the tribute that means the most.