This story was passed to me today and thought it post worthy.  Basically the friendly folks at Verizon are putting it on us (yes, I am a customer) to tell them NOT to share our call information with others.  This Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) is marketing gold as they plan to share it with "affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries."  Targeted ads based on your calling patterns anyone?

Carriers like Verizon are in constant competition to "suck less" than the alternatives and I have found them to be the best of the worst out there.  I’ll make my call and suggest you do the same.

This certainly seems to be the topic du jour so I’ll join the fray.  Lots of discussion going on about privacy and search engines.  Appears that Ask.com led the pivot strategy away from Google and took the high ground on maintaining user privacy around what you search for with Microsoft and Yahoo following suit.  Good discussion on this from Jeff Nolan as well as coverage on TechCrunch.  Here’s Google’s most recent discussion around privacy.

Over the weekend, I took a look at my search history via Google’s "Web History" that populates when I am logged into Google.  It was pretty fascinating as it strung together where I had been (maps & directions), what I had been looking for, what I had been talking about, who I had talked to, and more than a few random queries tied to various thoughts and discussions I had been having.  Nothing over the top, but a lot of details that struck me when I saw them neatly laid out in chronological order.   So rather than having my Outlook calendar and e-mail tell me this story (where I control this information), Google told me (where I don’t control it).

Now this is interesting and will have pretty far reaching implications if it holds up.  This ruling (via Information Governance Engagement Area) by the Idaho Supreme Court says that email exchanged between government employees is a public record.

"The e-mails are public records and not exempt from disclosure under either statutory exemptions or constitutional law," the court said in its unanimous five-justice opinion.

"The e-mail’s content is related to the public’s business because the public’s business includes job performance by a county employee, the spending policies of a county program, the issues surrounding that program’s demise. . ."

"…the high court rejected Kalani’s contention that disclosing the e-mail would violate her constitutional right to privacy, saying Kalani had no reasonable expectation of privacy because of the county e-mail policy that she signed. The policy says employees have no right to personal privacy when using e-mail systems provided by the county and that e-mail messages are public records."

I certainly don’t claim to be an early adopter of technology (the irony about my chosen career path is not lost on me, but more on that later) and come across many things long after they burst on the scene and turn into widely known and used products.

Jigsaw is one of those services/products that I have recently begun to understand.  Mostly because my inbox and voice mail box are filling up with messages from folks that seem to know exactly how to reach me (vs. finding me through our office phone switch).  This is not too surprising given my role as external spokesperson for MessageGate, but one particular inquiry and follow-up cell phone call made me ask the person how they found me.

The answer – Jigsaw.

I was certainly intrigued that somewhere out there my contact vitals are posted and once I got to understand how they build their contact base was left with a thought about how they have turned business cards and address books into currency that is freely traded.

In a way Jigsaw has created a dynamic marketplace of contact information where those who need to reach people they don’t know can trade on the value of the people they do know or know how to reach.

Which leads me to my next thought – who "owns" the value of my contact information?