Tag: privacy

The Price of Privacy: What Are You Paying for Your Online Choices?

I find it rather counter-intuitive that my very first blog happens to be about online privacy. I’ve shied away from blogs for so many years because they seemed too personal. I wasn’t ready to put my thoughts out there on the Internet. Yet, this week I’ve learned that I’ve put so much more of myself out there already without giving it much thought.

I use Facebook. I like to think that I’m a fairly savvy user of the site, reviewing my settings often, marking my photos as “friends only” instead of “public,” and requiring my permission for someone to tag me in a photo or post on my timeline. As an Internet user, you may feel the same way I do: you know what you are doing and are at least somewhat in control. You know you are giving up a little bit of privacy for the convenience of the many free applications you use on a regular basis. We all use free applications. They enable us to socialize, save money, and make life more convenient in so many ways. But are they really free? Are you paying for them with your privacy by handing over more information than you realize?

Data mining has become a huge industry, and data collection is widespread in the United States. Data brokers use data, such as public social media profiles and data from your purchases to provide information to marketers and put you in target categories. This means that each piece of data is not anonymous, but associated with you specifically and can be used for profiling –  to create a sort of picture of who you are and what you want. To give you an idea of scope, one data broker for Facebook has information on almost all of the households in the U.S. and $1 trillion in consumer transactions. Another data broker associated with Facebook, has information on 500 million consumers world-wide and about 1,500 data points per person.

Of course, the privacy concerns go far beyond just Facebook. Much of your online activity, such as search activity, is saved and can be sold to or used by third parties. Linking multiple accounts by using your Facebook or Google sign-on to create a new account exacerbates the problem of privacy. For the convenience of using your existing sign-on, you are connecting a variety of applications and providing more insight for profiling.

So what can you do to at least get back a little bit of your privacy? The article, How to Protect Your Privacy and Remove Data from Online Services, suggests a number of actions that you can take. I felt the following were simple and effective enough to use as a starting point:

  • Check your privacy settings in all of your apps and social media sites.
  • Remove old accounts.
  • Register with an alternate email address.
  • Set your browser to browse in private mode.

It can be overwhelming to think about all of the information you are sharing online and what to do about it. There are many benefits to being online so going “off grid” is not a feasible answer for most of us. However, you should do some research on unfamiliar apps and sites, err on the side of caution when sharing information or giving apps access to your personal data, and pause before you post anything online to think about if it really needs to be out there. Remember, just because an app or site is free, that does not mean that you aren’t paying for it one way or another.

Matteo, V. (2018, January 3). Facebook and Data Mining. TurboFuture. Available at: https://turbofuture.com/internet/How-Facebook-Collects-and-Sells-Your-Data [Accessed 2 Sep. 2019].

Howell, D. (2015, April 22) How to Protect Your Privacy and Remove Data from Online Services. TechRadar. Available at: https://www.techradar.com/news/internet/how-to-protect-your-privacy-and-remove-data-from-online-services-1291515 [Accessed 2 Sep. 2019]

High School: teacher privacy vs student privacy

As a High School teacher it can be difficult to address the issues of privacy…

As a High School teacher it can be difficult to address the issues of privacy in a school building. Especially when dealing with your own personal data.

In 2018, a student found my Instagram profile, at the time it was a open to public profile and had pictures of my trips, bad selfies and of my pets. After a student requested to follow me on Instagram I decided to make the profile private. This was for to reasons, the first was because I did not want students to use my posts for creating memes or as a way to hide their own presence. and the second reason was to help dictate who could see my pictures.

Later in that year our school was dealing with several instances with online bulling through an Instagram ‘tea’ (gossip) account. This account used a picture of me as its user profile. They took an image that was my profile pic, added eyebrows and then used it as the profile picture. This created the issue of being tied to a sight that I did not have any control over. We did not know who the account belonged to. This also means that the picture of me they used will forever link me to it.

(top the eyebrow-ed picture, bottom original picture)

In looking through this weeks videos and readings, It is clear that though we create a public to private environment, we have to address the issues of unintended usage of our data especially when others use our data to hide themselves.

Sharing is caring or is it?

What are your thoughts about the issues of safety, security, and privacy? What are your concerns? What are your ideas for addressing them in ways that still allow you to take advantage of the value of  social networking and media?

While driving home alone from a conference in Keystone this summer I called my husband and told him I wasn’t feeing well. I was using Waze to more to monitor the traffic than for directions. I didn’t realize Waze was monitoring me as well. When I hung up with my husband an ad popped up on Waze, an ad for the Urgent Care five minutes from my home, the Urgent Care we always use, I was an hour away. It was then that I realized the lack of privacy I had driving in my own car alone. Was it helpful information? Yes. Did I make an appointment? Yes. It has made me consider things I say in private may not actually be in private. 

I have social media, I am not so concerned with privacy that I will delete all my accounts and live without a digital footprint, it doesn’t seem reasonable in this technological age. I do not share my phone number or mother’s maiden name or my social security number, I thought not sharing those things kept me safe.

Everyone must have a personal social level they are comfortable sharing, online and in person. I will spill my guts about a bad day to a coworker who casually asks “how was your day?” I cannot stop myself from saying where I bought something and how much I saved if someone compliments an outfit. Then there are people who don’t overshare, people who would answer “fine, thanks, and you?” to my coworker’s question, people who respond to a compliment with a simple thank you. Our online identities are similar, people either feel free in sharing some personal information, vacation plans, check ins at restaurants, blogs, and YouTube videos, or they have social media accounts but rarely post, or they stay away from social media entirely.

The most important thing is people need to know how their information is being used, it is obviously being used from the targeted ads that appear on Facebook after you google “all inclusive Mexican vacations.” Some people may find that creepy, some may find it helpful. According to Panda mediacenter, “While many users think they are harmlessly adding information to their profiles, this information can be used for targeted ads, sold to marketers, or worse, sold into the black market. Facebook has even admitted to using 98 different data points to target advertisements.” My comfort level, like most people, lands somewhere in between the extremes. I want social media to keep in touch with family and friends, I also want to protect my privacy. 

I have created alternate Facebook and InstaGram accounts, one with my professional name that is easy for my students’ families to find and one with my maiden name for personal use. I have had a Gmail address for about 14 years, I have used that email for all things, I am also notoriously bad at deleting email. Since this is near the end of my blog post and I’m sure no one reads anything on the internet, I will confess to having, at this point, over 28,000 unread emails cluttering up the email box. I know, it is a problem. As soon as I post this I will create a new email address and hide the old one, if only I can figure out those privacy settings. 

Resources:

(2018, June 26). How Much Does Social Media Know About You – Panda Security. Retrieved from https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/social-media/how-much-does-social-media-know-about-you/

Who Took the Cookie From the Cookie Jar?

The young children’s song of “Who Took the Cookie From the Cookie Jar” is a classic nursery rhyme where kids try to guess who took the cookie as they go around the circle. Oddly enough, with the addition of data mining, computer cookies, and data caches we are back trying to guess who took our cookies and in this case our search history.

So what exactly are computer cookies and what does this mean for our privacy? Whatarecookies.com addresses many frequently asked questions related to computer cookies and describes them as “small files which are stored on a user’s computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client computer.”

Cookies will record our usernames/ log in information as well as what we are searching or clicking on while browsing and then customizes web pages and advertisements accordingly. This is why you might notice the shoes you searched up weeks ago continues to pop up along the side of websites you are visiting or in suggested posts on social media applications. While it is very nice to not have to constantly log in to facebook and similar websites every time you visit the site, where my worry sets in is when I put in credit or debit card information.

The graphic above illustrates the distrust in our privacy and in no area is there more than 10% of the sample population that is very confident in our cyber security. I operate under the assumption that as long as I am online, privacy is not guaranteed because you never know who’s hand is in your “cookie jar”.

Private Eyes, They’re Watching You…

Privacy by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Privacy in the digital realm is of major concern. Which is no wonder as the number of data breaches of big companies continues to grow.

By J. Clement

There is another concern, however, and that is the question of how companies and governments will use this information to influence society.

On need only look at China’s “Social Credit System” to bring up ideas of Orwell’s 1984 and Big Brother watching you.

This social system has been in development for a while. The system has roots in Mao’s rule, but in its current state, was created in 2001 (Hoffman). Sold as a way to build up a system for distributing credit, and illustrating trust, this program has a number of much more sinister applications. One can listen to what happens when a Chinese citizen gets a low social credit score, as this episode of NPR’s “Planet Money” covers.

In addition, there is a not so far fetched episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror” that shows what could happen when someone’s social score drops so low that services are denied. Do people think that this episode mimics China’s Social Credit System? This video explains just that.

In this article from the Washington Post, there is an exploration of what the Chinese people think about this credit scoring system. Could this happen in the United States? This article in Fast Company suggests that it has already happened.

Is it as bad as most people from the West seem to think? According to this article in the MIT Technology Review, the answer may not be as straight forward as we think. In addition, the fact is that Chinese tradition is that of finding ways to incentive moral behavior.

Is this program a simple nudge to get people to behave in a way that is better for the greater good? Does this program make free-thinking citizens into robots who simply follow rules and do not question authority? What happens to those who are marginalized by this system? These questions might be answered with more study of this program.

Regardless of what one might think, as many of these videos and articles suggested, it is impossible not to have your data out there for companies or governments to use. In the end, every time we click “Accept terms” for forfeit a little privacy to get what we want or need from those companies.

  • Clement, J. (2019, July 9). Global identity theft data breaches 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/215794/identity-theft-data-breaches-worldwide/
  • Elgan, M. (2019, August 26). Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/90394048/uh-oh-silicon-valley-is-building-a-chinese-style-social-credit-system
  • Kostka, G. (2019, March 21). What do people in China think about ‘social credit’ monitoring? Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-people-china-think-about-social-credit-monitoring/
  • Hao, K. (2019, April 23). Is China’s social credit system as Orwellian as it sounds? Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/f/613027/chinas-social-credit-system-isnt-as-orwellian-as-it-sounds/
  • Hoffman, Samantha (12 December 2017). “Programming China: The Communist Party’s autonomic approach to managing state security” (PDF). MERICS CHINA MONITOR. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
  • Netflix. (2016, October 21). Nosedive. Black Mirror. New York, New York.
  • NPR. (2018, October 26). Blacklisted In China. Planet Money. New York, New York.
  • YouTube. (2018, April 4). Is China Becoming A Black Mirror Episode (Social Credit). Asian Boss.

Safety, security, & privacy

What are your thoughts about the issues of safety, security, and privacy? What are your concerns? What are your ideas for addressing them in ways that still allow you to take advantage of the value of social networking and media?

Before we begin our more formal exploration of digital cultures and social networking/media in education, we need to address issues and concerns related to safety, security, and privacy. Let’s start with some context and framing:

  • danah boyd, past and present views:

As you think about your own use of social networking and media tools and platforms, what are your thoughts about the issues of safety, security, and privacy? What are your concerns? What are your ideas for addressing them in ways that still allow you to take advantage of the value of social networking and media?

Although you are welcome to add a comment below, I recommend you start a new blog post*. [I provide a brief how-to walk through on our activity page in Canvas. If you are looking for more, please see resources I recommend via my Joni’s Ideas & Resources page on this site.]

*Remember, you are now authors of this site, so you may add pages, blog posts, etc. I recommend starting a new blog post so you may begin working with the features and functionality of blogging with WordPress. At this point you should have received an automatically generated email from the WordPress site with your username and password; if you haven’t received an email, please check your Junk/Spam folder, but if it’s not there message me and I will reset your password and sent it to you manually.:-)