KLM is persisting with its Seat and Meet flight companion selection system based on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, despite some dreadful if not stressful consequences from those who may not have given much thought to sharing their social media identities with the Dutch flag carrier in the past.
Some of these are well illustrated and explained in this article from last Friday in the New York Times.
The issues this plan may well raise for Australian airlines were also canvassed in Plane Talking in this report last December.
The temptation for airlines to go down this path is that by tapping into social media profiles they can crowd source market research and potential valuable additions to their data-based sales pitches for nothing, or next to nothing, on a scale that Tiger, or Jetstar, for example, couldn’t conceivably afford to attempt on their own.
But how much social media surveillance is too much, and what can we do about it once we have given our identities and preferences away, not realising what social media or for that matter search engines, will do with them?
The writer quit, or rather tried to quit, Facebook waay back, and is on LinkedIn, for which I simply don’t even begin to have any time to peruse. Should I amend my details to include being a cannibal? Will this see me seated next to empty seats, or beside some really scary people? Actually I fixed this long ago by using my passport name in full, not the name I use in ordinary life, but, hell, in 1991, long before social media, or the consumer internet, took off, I found myself identified to a seat companion by an indiscrete flight attendant.
The old dear then spent more than 11 hours of a flight between LAX and Amsterdam, Yes, on KLM, explaining how the writing on the tub of yoghurt she had just eaten explained that she was related to the Dutch royalty. And when I tried to fall asleep with my headset on, she lifted up one of the cans to wake me up.
This part of the NYT story is also disturbing:
Satisfly, based in Hong Kong, allows users to submit profile information as well as their flight “moods” — whether they would prefer to talk shop or chat casually — and other details like languages spoken and preferences about potential seatmates. The information is then shared with its airline partners, which incorporate the data into their own seat-assignment platforms.
It suggests that there is no escape from a social media past within the confines of airliners.
A further critique of these issues was published on Saturday in The Atlantic by Edward Tenner, a US historian of technology and culture.
Lemme see, I’d like to sit beside him, I must check out his airline preferences and do a bit of reservations stalking!
7 Comments
A horrible idea. Just wait for the stalking (and hopefully nothing worse) lawsuits.
Ben,
I do a lot of work in the social media space and I find this idea creepy and doomed for a quiet failure.
I fundamentally don’t get what KLM or even Satisfly are trying to achieve with this. We’ve seen in the movie cinema companies leverage social networks to allow friends to like and organise group outings to specific movies – but a movie is a far different proposition to a 8-16 hour trans-con or tans-pac flight.
The other issue that is yet to be addressed is around security. Platforms like Facebook are leaky – and present numerous opportunities for users to accidentally release information or even have an account compromised.
Now, what if we take this a step further and move beyond the whole personal privacy issue – what about corporate privacy? What if a corporate spy was able to use a fake profile to friend, and then sit beside a key executive of your company? All the while acting like a considerate fellow passenger and not talking or nagging you, but quietly reading over your shoulder as you scan confidential documents, or even riffling your bags whilst you sleep from Sydney to Dallas? What if said spy was able to get access to your laptop while you slept and inserted a USB drive that dropped a malware app onto your machine?
Hmm, how many Defence, Government, Mining, IT, Finance, execs are flying around the world right now? With Facebook profiles?
Thromby’s version says it all, i think…
http://www.thrombyair.com/2012/02/seat-meat/
Listing your interests as cannibalism? That is TOO funny. Rather than an empty seat, however, you may end up sitting next to other cannibals (probably not a problem unless the stale sandwiches and five dollar peanuts run out!)
While the issues highlighted in the two articles linked are real, I think both commentators have missed out on the fact that the seat&meet is completely optional. Don’t want to potentially have to deal with the issues? Then don’t link your facebook / linkedin account, it’s that simple.
Reservation stalking is possible, but since you can’t see who is on a flight if you don’t have a confirmed (i.e. paid-for and non-refundable) ticket it’s an expensive proposition, and can of course be completely defended against by not linking your social media details in the first place.
For the average hacker out to make a quick buck the personal and credit card details already stored in the reservation system are far more valuable than a facebook or linkedin account.
The optional aspects may have been overtaken by policy changes in social media providers including Google, which now, if I can cut to the chase, say they will use your data for whatever purpose they like.
It is more than possible for spyware to find out what you tried to restrict, and also raises the potential for the friends of a person who agrees to sharing their profile to also have their private data extracted.
There are too many examples of supposedly private data being unlocked by a variety of means to give us any confidence of anonymity from such services.
What about bombs?
In the past airlines wouldn’t release the passenger manifest until after the flight for security.
Personally social media has got just a little too invasive. You think LinkedIn and Facebook are interesting and before you know it details about you are every where.