So there are instances of privacy invasion such as the Facebook fiasco where the company decided to change the way they displayed certain information that may have been public before, but it was difficult to find or track.

Then there are instances of privacy invasion where you believe you are engaging in a private act with a third-party, only to discover that your supposedly private communication was made public by a prankster:

Waxy.org: Daily Log: Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds

As Waxy.org noted:

If taken to court, he’s at risk of two primary civil claims. “Intentional infliction of emotional distress,” while notoriously hard to prove in court, is certainly easier here based on his own writings. The second, more relevant claim, is “public disclosure of private facts.” This Findlaw article on the Washingtonienne scandal sums it up nicely:

The disclosure must be public. The facts must be private. The plaintiff must be identified. The publication must be “highly offensive.” And there must be an “absence of legitimate concern to the public” with respect to the publication.

I don’t condone anyone who answers a sex ad on Craigslist, but at the same time, legitimate researchers conduct legitimate experiments. Legitimate researchers don’t mislead subjects unless (a) it is vital to the research they are performing (e.g., to prove an academic or scientific hypothesis under consideration); (b) has been approved by an Independent Review Board (IRB); and (c) is unlikely to cause any kind of significant emotional distress in the subject. If this was any kind of “legitimate” experiment, it would’ve followed these research ethics.

Since it doesn’t, it’s pretty clear this was a malicious prank, not an “experiment.” The hypothesis was, “to see what kind of responses [we] could get.” One could engage in such an experiment without publishing contact information for respondants, right? So one can only imagine the reasons the author decided to post the emails and contact information publicly.

For the record, Simon Owens conducted the first experiment through Craigslist a few weeks ago about people answering personal ads through the service. Simon didn’t post the emails and actually came to some conclusions about what he discovered.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 11 Sep 2006
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