Data Recovery and the Dark Side of Web 2.0

OK hands up everyone who has heard of the phrase Web 2.0? Everyone, good, means that we are all paying attention then. Unless you have either juts arrived on Planet Earth from the Planet Zanussi or have been sheltering under a rock for the past couple of years then you would have been hard pressed not to have heard of the phrase Web 2.0?

It was supposed to be the panacea to all Internet ills and the ultimate answer to all marketers’ dreams. It was also supposed to make our daily lives and the way we interact with each other online so much more complete and intuitive.

Well if we are honest the jury is still out on most of these issues as yes good old Web 2.0 and its sites do tick some of the boxes but as in all good things when it comes to mankind, why do we never quit when we are ahead?

By this I mean that there are some cracking sites out there with some extremely useful features and functions but as in all cases, sooner or later along come a bunch of folks who proceed to screw it up for everyone else.

Hands up those who know anything about Facebook?

Good, lots of you and this is good as it means that the PR people behind Facebook have been doing their job so bonuses all round, we can all afford to stand up properly for a change!

Hands up all of you who understand properly the way that all of those nice cute little applications on Facebook work when all your mates keep sending you cute and cuddly little virtual friends and flowers, exploding eggs, plants whatever?

Hmnnnn. Not quite as many as who answered in the affirmative the first time round. Not so good, as there are a number of reasons why you should be aware of how they and other applications like them work.

As I switch on and log into my Facebook account (yes I have one) I can’t help but notice the growing number of cute and cuddly wee applications that keep cropping up when people sent me items. Now this is all very nice and it does indeed keep you all warm and fuzzy inside to know that people care but there is a more insidious side to all of this. Every time you try and open a “hatching egg” or a growing plant” you are asked to download and open an application to run these gifts. Hidden behind the scenes in some of these applications are bots and crawlers who are unleashed onto your hard drive, email in box or wherever they can go to “mine” personal data and store this data. Yes folks you have just been the victim in some cases of the first stages of Identity Theft. In the worst cases your hard drive may be infected and you are on the slippery slope to your data being harvested and the hard drive roasted and fried.

Not a nice picture is it and one that the folks behind Facebook (and others) are less likely to portray? The trouble is that a lot of these applications are third party applications that are not hosted on Facebook’s own servers and as such Facebook and its personnel have no control over what is going on by and large.

Welcome to the hidden dark side of Web 2.0, where it is all too easy to submerge yourself into a collective consciousness and forget about how you may be exposing yourself to hidden theft.

Now if you are the victim of this type of Internet Mugging and yes you have suffered data loss as a result. What are you going to do now?

Stephen Morgan writes regularly on such matters and more can be found on Hard Drive Recovery and at http://www.diskdoctors.net is a company that assists consumers to make educated decisions about their domestic or commercial energy needs.