I've noticed a lot of my friends on Twitter locking their updates in recent days. From what I gather, the rationale behind these changes are logical and predictable: a desire for more privacy. Privacy from spam followers. Privacy from search engines. Privacy from co-workers/supervisors. Et cetera. Et cetera.

I'm currently weighing this question myself, but I'm sticking with the open model, at least for now. Why? Well, for one my supervisor is already following me on Twitter, so even if I locked updates, he'd still see everything. I have no desire to lock him out anyhow, as he and I have used Twitter on numerous occasions to communicate about work issues. It's actually been *gasp!* PRODUCTIVE. Of course, because my supervisor is following me on Twitter, I already know not to say things I wouldn't want the higher ups to see. Maybe that feels limiting at times, but it probably prevents me from saying things that would be unprofessional no matter who my audience was. Though in all fairness, even knowing my boss is watching hasn't prevented me from pushing the boundaries of appropriateness from time to time (*cough" RedDot *cough*).

As for spam followers, won't I still receive requests from those same bots? Won't I still have to go decline those requests? (I don't know the answer to that question. Could someone with locked updates answer that for me?) If so, that reminds me a lot of my current periodic maintenance of blocking the bots who are already following me.

In general, I'm still on board the open updates wagon because it helps me connect with new people. When I receive an email notification that I have a new follower, I always go to their profile to see who they are and if I want to follow them. If their updates are locked, and I have no way of knowing who they are, I'm not going to follow them. And so I assume the same is true for my updates. If people see me tweeting about open source software or libraries or movies, that might be a reason for them to follow me. And I'd like to encourage that kind of interaction. At least for now.

The recent trend of locked updates reminds of what happened on MySpace a year or two ago. At first, we all had public profiles, and every last dirty detail was out there for the world to see. Slowly, as more and more people realized there might be consequences to this sort of openness, people started to lock their profiles, making them visible only to friends. And then eventually most of us moved to Facebook anyway, a system that hides most of our information from the outside world by default (not that FB isn't without its own unique privacy problems).

Perhaps Twitter will eventually evolve into a similarly closed network. But if that happens, I hope Twitter adopts a setting similar to what Facebook has. That is, when someone with locked updates begins following my updates, I should have a window of time in which I can view their updates, too. That way I can determine whether or not I want to reciprocate and follow them. Otherwise I have often have no information to go on.

Following a flurry of complaints, Current TV is no longer requiring visitors to its website to submit personal contact info just to find out if their cable or satellite provider carries the network. Only a zip code is required now.

Current's blog credits Lost Remote for prompting the change on personal info requests, but I'd like to believe my own complaint played at least a minor role in the decision.)

[Current TV Blog] How to get Current (via BC Beat)

The story of a family's fight to see its late son's email is generating a lot of debate this week. U.S. Marine Justin Ellsworth was killed in Iraq last month, and webmail provider Yahoo! is refusing to grant his family access to his account. Yahoo! based its decision on company policy that email accounts and all contents associated with them terminate upon a user's death and that accounts are deleted after 90 days of inactivity. The story took a turn for the absurd today with USA Today reporting that Ellsworth's family has received offers from two hackers to help them break into their son's account. To their credit, the family has expressed no interest in such a course of action, opting instead to seek a resolution with Yahoo!

Those supporting the soldier's family state the importance of protecting history. Comparing the email account to letters written by WWII soldiers, they say the deletion of the email by Yahoo! would amount to the loss of important documents of family history.

As the son of an avid genealogist (and former Marine), I certainly understand a family's desire to obtain any record of their son's life so that it can be preserved and passed down to future generations. As a fallen American soldier, Justin Ellsworth deserves that kind of honor (and then some). But if his family wants a record of his wartime correspondence, they should obtain copies from the recipients of that correspondence.

Access to Ellsworth's email account would give his family access to a lot more than just his war emails. In fact, any emails authored by the soldier himself would only be included in the account if he opted to save his sent messages, an option that is turned off by default in Yahoo! Mail. What family members would be more likely to find are emails sent by others to their son. What about those people's right to privacy? Yahoo! is in no position to weigh the merits of every request it receives to open a deceased user's account. In a time when civil liberties seem to be disposable, a company that truly protects its customers' privacy should be applauded.

Ellsworth's father says that what he really wants access to are the final messages that the soldier didn't get a chance to send before his death. The family is hoping to print out copies of these drafts for inclusion in a scrapbook. Unfortunately, because Ellsworth had not yet sent these messages to anyone, it is arguable that he had not yet waived any expectation of privacy associated with the messages. Furthermore, it's simply not possible to grant access to these messages without compromising the privacy of messages that the family has no entitlement to see. (Unless Yahoo! staffers read all of the account's contents themselves to determine what to release and what to protect; but such a course of action in itself would be an invasion of privacy.)

There's a reason we password protect our accounts: because the contents are private. I love my family very much, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want them sifting through my inbox after I'm gone. In reality, I'd have no problem with them accessing my email accounts, but my ISP shouldn't make that assumption for me. Or anyone else.

What about corporate email accounts? Many people use their email at work for personal correspondence (regardless of their employer's email policies). Should companies be expected to grant network access to a deceased employee's family? I doubt such an expectation would ever garner widespread support. Why, then, should a corporation's right to protect its secrets be any more important than an individual's right to do the same thing?

[CNN.com] Dead Marine's kin plead for e-mail
[USATODAY.com] Marine's family gets e-mail dispute help
[Slashdot.org] Dead? Hope You Left Someone Your Passwords
[iafrica.com] Yahoo blocks dead soldier's emails