Periscope Could Have a Privacy Problem

​On Thursday, Twitter launched ​Periscope, a live streaming video app—and predictably, everyone's losing their collective minds.

It's a dramatic situation, after all; Meerkat, a plucky startup that exploded in popularity after launching less than a month ago, was blocked from access to Twitter's social graph after Twitter bought Periscope. This move effectively broke some of Meerkat's most appealing features, like automatically following people you already follow on Twitter.

It's Meerkat's David pitted against Periscope's industry-backed Goliath. And Periscope is slick—it's beautiful and it works. But one point remains largely unaddressed: How does Periscope treat your privacy, and are we running headlong into a whole new privacy mess with live streaming video?

Here are some of the potential concerns with Periscope, based on its privacy guidelines and the past behaviour of its parent company, Twitter.

Data Sharing

Twitter currently shares its firehose of tweets with a company called Ditto, which scans images for branded content—say, a logo on a shirt, or a Starbucks coffee. The company also analyzes things such as the context these branded items appear in: are people drinking Starbucks on the go? At home? You can even check out a live stream of images being analyzed on the company's site.

Periscope, as a property and service of Twitter, Inc., is largely governed by Twitter's own Terms of Service and privacy guidelines. So, we can expect Periscope to treat your videos in a similar manner as Twitter treats your tweets, images, and so on.

The first thing to note here is that your videos, or data pulled from your videos, can be be shared with third parties such as "search engines, developers, and publishers that integrate Twitter content into their services, and institutions such as universities and public health agencies that analyze the information for trends and insights," as per Twitter's privacy statement—and, lest we forget, advertisers too.

When you're live streaming, you give away more than you likely would in a tweet, or even a static photo. The ambient sound of your surroundings, what's on your t-shirt, who's in the background of the shot, and your offhanded, uncensored comments will all be included.

Analyzing videos for the same kind of information could provide an even greater wealth of valuable data for marketing companies such as Ditto.

Location Data

Consider a live stream of a protest or some other form of direct action that doesn't sit well with an authoritarian government, or—if you can imagine—the US. There's plenty of visual information that a user might not have meant to capture and share, such as who attended the event, for example, or how events went down in order to mount a legal argument levied against a protestor.

But here's another point from Periscope's privacy statement that is also worth considering: "We may infer your location based on information from your device." What kinds of information? Periscope doesn't say, but Twitter's privacy statement mentions "information about wireless networks or cell towers near your mobile device, or your IP address."

When Motherboard contacted a Twitter representative for comment on whether turning off location services on Periscope prevents your location from being inferred, we were referred to the Periscope privacy page which only includes the previous quote. A follow up email was not immediately answered.

Keep in mind that this isn't new. Twitter does it too, and this information is likely used for advertising purposes—to "provide features of our Services […] and to improve and customize the Services," according to the app's privacy statement.

But, imagine that the US government asks Twitter nicely for some user data from Periscope regarding an event they're interested in. Since Twitter complies with 80 percent of US requests for user information, according to a transparency report for the last half of 2014, odds are good that the company will comply. The US doesn't just have all the information in your video, they may also know your approximate location based on inferences Twitter made from your device's data too.

Everything Is Public

This is the main point to keep in mind—not just for Periscope, but for all data you share online. Periscope, just like your email and anything else you do on the internet, can be viewed, used, and in some cases, abused, by a number of different parties. Some may be benevolent, and some may not.

Sure, Periscope will have some good uses. It may be fun, informative, and allow people to share events and experiences that need sharing. But remember that on the internet, everyone is watching, and not just the people you normally expect—you're not the only one looking into the internet through a periscope.