From the moment that Marketing was created the battle over customer privacy and spam began. It may not have been called privacy or spam when the first salesperson knocked on someone’s door during dinner but the same thinking was in play.

Few companies have fought more battles between Privacy and Spam than Microsoft. A recent blog post by Windows Live Mail highlights this:  Fighting the war on spam

Why do people send spam in the first place? It’s simple: for the money. Spam is big, big business. Much of it is also illegal, but, unfortunately, that hasn’t kept people from sending it.

Believe me, spam is a battle. Spammers won’t ever quit, and they are very clever. Spammers are constantly finding new ways to exploit the services that we provide to our customers, to abuse the very system that you use every day to communicate with your friends and family and to conduct your personal business. But we won’t quit, either.

Customer information is possibly the most valuable substance on earth. The core of marketing since it’s beginnings, stemming from government subsidized, post World War II research, has been customer data. In the beginning the first breakthrough was demographic data. Demographic data excited and terrified people because of it’s implications, both to the new field of Marketing but also on privacy. Demographic data terrified a World still recovering from the Nazi threat.

Today’s social networks create data that makes demographic data dated and benign. And this scares people. Mark Zuckerberg recently made the statement that Privacy doesn’t matter anymore which has created some great debate.

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about the importance of privacy Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy Is Still Important

Privacy is a fundamental human right and while that may seem less true when we’re operating on corporate turf like Facebook, Facebook used to be based on privacy. Why give it up so easily? (Isn’t it a cause for concern that so much of our civic interaction now goes on through this and other corporate channels?)

It’s very hard to believe that the hundreds of millions of mainstream Facebook users are wanting to throw their privacy out the window - and if Facebook believes they are, why not just ask them clearly?

Mike Arrington writes about the illusion of privavcy we’ve been living under for years. Ok You Luddites, Time To Chill Out On Facebook Over Privacy

The fact is that privacy is already really, really dead. Howard Lindzon nailed it the other day when he said “Equifax, Transunion, Capital One, American Express and their cousins raped our privacy,” Everything we do, everything we buy, everywhere we go is tracked and sitting in a database somewhere. Our location via our phone, or our car GPS. Our credit card transactions. Everything. Honestly, a picture of you taking a bong hit in college is mice nuts compared to the mountain of data that is gathered and exploited about every single one of us every single day. You just don’t really see that other stuff because those companies don’t like to talk about the data their gathering.

Neither Marshall or Mike are wrong. Privacy is important and we do live in a World where privacy isn’t what we think it is. For digitally savvy people like you and me that are very aware of and (relatively) comfortable with the amount of data we have out there this isn’t a big problem. But most people have no idea about privacy and spam. The rise of worms and security exploits in social networks is already a huge problem because most people don’t know to not click on weird links. This only fuels the fear around privacy.

Some companies live on this fear and many more profit from it. Hence the recent partnership with McAfee and Facebook. Both companies make money on this deal. Better Security through Software | Facebook

One of the best defenses against security threats is a good offense, and we want to help you take the offensive by having the latest security software installed on your computer. Today, we are announcing a year-long partnership with McAfee to offer all 350 million people who use Facebook the ability to download a six-month subscription to McAfee security software at no cost, along with a special discount once the six months are over.

This only exacerbates the problem of privacy vs. spam. Facebook (and any Web company) make more money the more information they can get you to expose. This opens up users to the risk of spam and the risk of viruses which Facebook (and other Web companies) need to control in order to keep users (read MySpace) but they also make money by fighting it. It’s the arms dealer making money selling weapons to both sides.

Hence the never ending battle. The only thing we can do is be smart about our data and approach the battle with eyes wide open. After all it’s our information the battle is being waged over, be smart with it.

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