Microsoft Office 2010 Standard Social networking d

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Be social, and be smart
Social networking has quickly become one of the most popular ways for people to connect with their family, friends and colleagues. It has also brought up many new questions about privacy and security.

People ask me all the time: How do you protect your privacy and security, while still enjoying the conveniences of sharing your life online? And what do privacy and security really entail?

First, I'd say that sharing thoughts, photos, and videos with friends and family is fun, but it's always wise to consider what you may be giving up in exchange for the luxury of sharing your news in real-time.

You also have to find your comfort level for sharing personal or business information online. Some people feel comfortable enough to "tell all" for everyone to see, as is the case with Josh Harris and his lifecasting experiments. He uses Internet video to showcase his life,Office 2010 Professional Key, a feat that would be extremely uncomfortable for most people, myself included. On the other end of the spectrum, many people still refuse to use social networks for various reasons, including lack of time,Windows 7 Professional Product Key, lack of the value they perceive, or privacy concerns.

Most of us fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. For the average user, the concern is about preventing identity theft, bullying, stalking, or a deluge of spam messages.

Privacy and security are even more important for the business user, because social networking needs to consider the privacy requirements of the individual and their employer. For me, not only do I need to protect my identity as an individual,Microsoft Office 2010 Standard, I also need to make sure the intellectual property of Microsoft is kept safe.

The responsibility to protect your privacy and security is not just your own. The providers of social spaces must also make an effort to ensure the privacy and security of their users are protected. At the June 2010 Association for Computing Machinery's Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, the attendees drafted the Social Network Users' Bill Of Rights, explicitly laying out what users expect from social networking providers. It's encouraging to see the industry policing itself, and I think initiatives like these will become even more important as social networking takes deeper roots into our daily lives.

At Microsoft, privacy and security are two of the most important considerations when we build products and services,Windows 7, and over the last 35 years we've become pretty sensitized in thinking about how to ensure the safety and privacy of users. Microsoft's Chief Privacy Strategist, Peter Cullen, pointed out in a June 15 post:

...it is simply not enough to retrofit privacy protections into existing products and services. Rather, privacy protections must be incorporated into every aspect of product development, from design through deployment.

We heeded Peter's advice when we built the Outlook Social Connector. With the Outlook Social Connector, users choose whether they want to bring social networks into their inbox by installing a "provider" from a variety of social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live, and MySpace. We built Outlook Social Connector to respect the privacy settings that users have chosen on the social networks. This means that Outlook will pull photos or feeds from your contacts based on their privacy settings on the social networks. What you see of your contacts depends on how much they have decided to share on the social sites. Also, it pulls this data in a secure way, hashing email addresses so they are not discoverable. Respecting the privacy settings that our customers are already using in their social networks was a key design principle in our design of the Outlook Social Connector.

Sharing your thoughts, pictures,Genuine Office 2007, and other social tidbits doesn't have to mean you give up elements of privacy or security. As a general rule of thumb: Be conscious of your surroundings and follow some very basic guidelines to protect yourself in social networks.

-- Takeshi Numoto

Office Corporate Vice President
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