Privacy and control

At Inspire, we think about privacy all the time. Virtually every web site has a privacy policy; you can read ours here: http://www.inspire.com/about/privacy/. But simply following the letter of a privacy policy falls short, we think, of treating people the right way. We do follow the rules we describe in our privacy policy, but we also try at all times to behave ethically. We think that this boils down to two things:

a) You, as a member of Inspire, should be in control of your personal information and how it's shared.

b) We will never try to trick you.

The first point, about being in control, is what I want to take a moment to discuss. If you visit your privacy control panel, here, https://www.inspire.com/account.pl?op=privacy you'll see a grid of all the things you can control. We've chosen the default settings based on what we think is right, which means, essentially, 'how would I want a member of my own family to be treated?'. Now, the key to this page is that you can change your own settings anytime and as often as you want. One of the improvements we made to the site in March was to increase the number of things you can control on this page. For example, we didn't previously allow you to hide your age, because we thought it was better for you to be discoverable by other members looking for friends in the same age range. Most members agreed with us, but a small number objected strongly. So, we changed that.

The second point is not meant as a joke. I myself have accidentally shared more than I wanted to online when I was confused by a site, and I'm a pretty savvy user. In that case, I'm not entirely sure it was an accident. At Inspire, there are numerous examples of improvements we've made to our pages in order to reduce confusion. We have learned that not everyone is confused by the same things. So we design our interface to respect our members. This means being easy-to-use without being patronizing. A lot of thought goes into that, and we're always improving.

What do you think? I'd love to know how you feel about privacy -- what to share, and what not to. I'd also like to know if you find that our privacy settings give you the control you need.

Thank you,
Brian