I tend to be fairly careful with data, especially data on this site. When we started the site, we were worried about potential issues and worked hard to ensure we kept our systems safe and limited the attack surface area for personal information. We also declined the various offers we had to sell our list of subscribers to marketing firms. We know that some places add value for marketing, but some abuse the trust of their users and our approach was always to be careful.

When we sold the site to Redgate, we emphasized the need for this trust, and to date, Redgate has been a great steward of your personal information. I regularly field requests for uses of data from other marketing people, and almost all get declined. I’ve had a number of great managers who have supported me on this because we value your privacy.

Recently I saw a piece from Troy Hunt, asking who deserves privacy. He runs HaveIBeenPwned, which tracks data breaches. There have been some sensitive breaches, like the Ashley Madison breach, and he has decided to handle some of those differently. I appreciate that, even though I don’t visit any of those sites, I do think there can be unintentional consequences from revealing too much data.

We certainly have plenty of problems with public data, which was never intended to be accessed at scale. Once someone can query lots of data from one place, they can correlate and use it in ways we never imagined.

In the piece Troy notes that he has been attacked by some people because he has chosen to redact certain information. This is censorship of a sort, but a) this is a private site, and b) there are good intentions. This service was never intended to be a weapon, and I agree with that. I have rarely censored anyone at SQL Server Central, but it has happened when someone becomes harassing and unprofessional. Our forums are great for civil debate and disagreement, but not for personal attacks.

I am glad for the restrictions that the GDPR and similar legislation has placed on how companies used data. It has made many individuals and organizations more responsible with how they handle data internally. It hasn’t necessarily helped with data breaches, but at least there are less intentional abuses.

Data has tremendous power at scale and my view is similar to Troy’s: we all deserve some level of privacy.

Steve Jones

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