Online identity expert loses control of NSFW R-rated online pics

David M Williams
Sunday, 22 March 2009 17:05

Your IT - Home IT

Today, if you visit Dick Hardt’s photo album on Facebook he says he finally received permission to add a couple of “special” photos of the Maui honeymoon, yet there are exactly zero photos to be seen.

It wasn’t always that way. The photos – taken by Tad Craig Photography – were indeed posted to Facebook, and as always seems to happen with the things you’d rather not become public, they became public.

If you need to see the evidence for yourself gawker.com took a copy for posterity.

Dick Hardt explained these photos were shared only to friends on Facebook, and were never intended to become public. Good friends, hey?

While most of us will have sympathy for Hardt’s response, the dreadful irony is that he makes a living from the very issue of protecting and controlling your identity online. Indeed, the very reason he was recruited by Microsoft was to work on such matters.

Hardt especially impressed with his brilliant OSCON 2005 keynote speech which is hailed as a masterpiece of presentationcraft even if the subject matter (“identity 2.0”) is not of interest.

Yet, this is just one of several setbacks to buffet the hapless entrepreneur in recent times with claims that his last company, now insolvent, misrepresented the likelihood of acquisition by the Google and Yahoo, and that Hardt placed another, previously unknown, company of his own first in line for payment.

Perhaps Hardt’s mind was distracted by the joy of his recent wedding, or by his troubles with former investors. Either way you have to acknowledge the unfortunate irony in an online identity expert losing control of his own privacy. It is simply a huge boner on Dick’s part to make such a gaffe, resulting in his NSFW R-rated photos released to the wild.

As much as I respect the work of Dick Hardt I can’t help but agree with the wickedly sardonic tone of the poster who responded to his explanation with, “@Dick Hardt: First day on the internet?”