Reddit Privacy Policy

Andres Perez U# 64550896 Computer Science and Engineering Department College of Engineering University of South Florida

Email: perezleon@mail.usf.edu

February 14, 2014

On the past ten years, the privacy policies on websites is something that has become more important. People realized that many sites where sharing their information without their consent, or to express in a better way, they agreed to that sharing, they just did not know. People started to realize how important was those links, normally at the bottom of the website, regarding these rules about the treatment that that particular site will give to their personal information. This has lead people to sue many website regarding not respecting their privacy policies, and big data giants as Google and Facebook have not being the exception (Facebook in Privacy Breach, 2010). Hence, this essay will analyze the privacy policy of a site that have been gathering fame in past couples of years, Reddit. First it will be discussed the privacy policy in general, and the point of view of Reddit regarding your personal information. secodnly, it will be covered what type of information does Reddit collect and why is so important to keep this information secure, thirdly, how this sites manages sharing information with third parties and in what situations the do so, and finally how is all this connected to the Fourth Amendment of the United States. But first, what is exactly Reddit? Reddit is a site where users submit stories, that are then voted up or down to their liking; the more votes a story gets the more people will see it. Reddit structure is fairly simple but very functional. The site consist of several communities, called subreddits, which are conformed by people interested in a subject in common(reddit.com: about reddit, n.d.). Then, user submits links to a story, news, picture, video, or even write their own post related to the subreddit they are on. People can subscribe to as many subreddits as they want, so stories of their interest appear on their front page when they reach the site.

Your privacy is genuinely important to us (reddit.com: privacy policy, n.d.), is the sentence with which Reddit tittles his own privacy policy, they restate over and over through the entire document, that they only collect the data that they need for the website functionality and no any other type of data not related to their or the user interests. This agrees with one of the Fair Information Practice principles. They want to keep the user as anonymous as possible; Even their registration page ask you for a username and a password as a required field, the email is optional and only used for account recovery. In addition, they state that they will not send you an email unless you told so. Thus, what is the risk of this website revealing the information that they have if they even need your email? The answer is in the main concept of this site, and is peoples interests. Interests are the main tool for advertisers to deliver targeted ads(Bachman, n.d.). Although, Reddit only requires minimal information for their registration, they admit in their privacy policy that they collect other things to keep the site up and running. One of this things is your IP address when you register, and they will keep this for an indefinite time. But they only use this information to detect harmful users, or automated spam robots. Also, they keep the last IP from where you wrote a posts or a comment, for the same reason, but just for 90 days. Additionally, almost everything that you submit to Reddit, including private messages between users are never deleted in their databases, even deleting the user will not automatically delete his post on the community, and this is something that can be somewhat dangerous. Because people are reading stories related to their interest, they will probably have a strong opinion about a specific subject. Now, due to the sense of anonymity

given by the website, the user may express itself without any restrictions and offending people. This may led to people trying to revenge on this person and trying to find out personal information about this user. The disclosure of personal information on Reddit posts, is heavily punished, and this is knows in the community as dox and can have terrible consequences (Hacker Group DERP Target World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EA, And More, n.d.). But, the site with the little alien logo provides a way out, to keep your opinion out of the record. In their privacy policy they clarify, that they only keep the last version of your comment or post, so if you edit it or totally change the content of it, you can be on neutralize your opinion. Now, something ironic happens here and it is, that is not deleting the post what it will make it permanent, is keep it and edit what could save you. Now, Reddit does share information with third parties, but this information is very limited, and only related to your username, so you can log in in other sites, as redditgif.com, using the same credentials as in Reddit. They will not share their interest without letting you know first The previous cases, are just people or companies (mainly from advertising), looking for other people information. But, what about more official request? What if some federal organization is requesting the information? Well, they will need a probable cause and a court warrant to obtain it. Reddit has been one of the main supporters against the recently discovered surveillance of the NSA on people without their consent nor probable cause(York, n.d.). So, I could perfectly say that Reddit respect the Four Amendment at its finest.

Anonymity I think is the perfect word to describe Reddits privacy policy. They are not interested in selling your interests to gain some profit. They have their own currency inside the site, that users can buy to give to others in recognition of a good post or comment and this gold does not have any other use than that; the other thing that it does is support Reddits maintenance due to his nature of open source community project. Something that is also important to say is that any major change done to their privacy policy they will post it on their banner so everybody can see it. Basically Reddit does not like to interact with you unless is strictly necessary.

Bibliography Bachman, K. (n.d.). Poll: Targeted Advertising Is Not the Bogeyman [Updated]. AdWeek. Retrieved February 14, 2014, from http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/poll-targeted-advertising-notbogeyman-updated-148649 Facebook in Privacy Breach. (2010, October 18). Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230477280457555848407 5236968?mg=reno64wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304 772804575558484075236968.html Hacker Group DERP Target World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EA, And More. (n.d.). GAMEBREAKER - Video Game News, Videos, Reviews and Community. Retrieved from http://www.gamebreaker.tv/news/hacker-group-derp-target-worldwarcraft-league-legends-ea/ reddit.com: about reddit. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2014, from http://www.reddit.com/about/ reddit.com: privacy policy. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2014, from http://www.reddit.com/help/privacypolicy York, A. G. in N. (n.d.). Protesters rally for the day we fight back against mass surveillance. the Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/11/day-fight-back-protest-nsa-masssurveillance