Digital Bill Of Rights

Privacy is a major point of contention between online consumers and companies. Advertising agencies track us across the web in order to build profiles about us so they can more accurately market products to us. Individual websites track us as we move our mice or scroll down the page so they can better design the sites both for content and advertisement placement. But what rights do we have in all this? Shouldn’t we be able to limit, view, or correct data stored about us?

Our Digital Rights tries to answer that question with a proposed set of rights people should have over data about them.

The digital self should be afforded equal standing as the physical self before the law and society.

Places-Players-Perils: Privacy Framework

Jim Adler writes about a new framework, or way to think about the privacy concerning practices of companies. His Places-Players-Perils framework is designed to help decide whether a company’s data practices are creepy and why we might perceive them to be so.

Journalist fired over a photo of her at Occupy Wall Street

Excellent article by a journalist who participated in Occupy Wall Street, had a photograph of her taken while holding a sign, and was subsequently fired because she had “violated every ethic of journalism.”

 

SOUPS 2011

I’m blogging SOUPS 2011 over on the CUPS blog.

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/blog/?cat=20

Rental computers spying on users

A Wyoming couple is suing Aaron’s Inc. for using a rented computer to spy on them without their knowledge. Apparently they rented a computer form Aaron’s and later an Aaron’s employee showed the couple a photograph of them using the computer in their own living room. The computer apparently came pre-installed with software that can log key strokes and remotely activate the web cam.

This is similar to an earlier law suit by the family of a Pennsylvania high school student against the high school. In that case the school had issued laptops to students and had pre-installed software that could remotely activate the web cam. The issue came to light when a principle caught a student eating “pill looking objects” at home and accused the student of doing drugs. The student claims that the “pills” were candy. But the larger issue was the fact that school staff were observing the student in the privacy of his own home without even informing the parents that the laptops could be remotely activated.

Data Privacy Day Education Resources

Here are a ton of privacy education resources for everyone from teens to adults. The materials were put up as part of Data Privacy Day 2011. They include everything from classroom lesson plans to educational videos to simple tips and tricks. Highly recommended for anyone trying to educate others on data privacy.

IE9 privacy features

Lorrie Cranor has a nice blog post on the new privacy features of IE9.

Guide to online privacy

Nice page on privacy resources.

Current online privacy laws

The service DeleteMe (@_DeleteMe_) has a nice Your Privacy Rights page about current and upcoming laws concerning computer related privacy.

DeleteMe is a service that assists people with deleting information online. Their webpage lists Facebook accounts and Myspace accounts as common requests along with getting added to the US national Do Not Call list.

Online shopping, privacy, tracking and me on tv

KDKA news, in Pittsburgh, did an article on the FTC’s new ‘Do Not Track’ List proposal.

The exciting news is that I have a silent role in the video as a “shopper” and I’m using Ghostery.