The focus of this paper concerns the ethical and political use of information, using the World Economic Forum’s argument for the management of misinformation that if left out of control can lead to digital wildfires. Using examples from Social Media and the online reporting of Hurricane Sandy in 2009 I will demonstrate how information is misinterpreted and repurposed. This will be juxtaposed against the Chattr project as an example to demonstrate how a research project addressed issues of personal data sharing. This will be discussed in context with the ethical considerations of researching within an academic institution and compared against the Conversnitch project conducted outside of the ethical constraints of an academic institution. Specifically, I will look at the ethics and privacy of the use of the physical space to highlight ethical decisions that have repercussions in a digital public space.