Archive for the ‘Privacy’ Category

Social media and online privacy are always a concern, but more so in recent times with variable and ever-changing privacy policies. Here are five stories from the last couple of weeks covering online privacy:

Are You In Control of Your Social Media Privacy? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Stephanie Buck at Mashable blogs about a recent infographic titled Social Media Management: Protect Your Privacy created by ZoneAlarm, based on a 2012 study by Pew.

Do You Value Your Internet Privacy?
Alicia Eler at ReadWriteWeb takes a look at a recent study released by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) in which researchers investigated whether or not customers of online services would pay a mark-up to an online service provider who protected their information better.

Social Media Privacy: 3 Questions to Ask Before Authorizing Third-Party Apps
Jamie Beckland at Mashable talks about how best to insure your privacy on social sites and whether it’s a good idea to authorize outside apps to access your information.

Internet privacy a growing concern, Pew finds
Benny Evangelista, SFGate dicusses privacy with regard to search engines and whether or not people’s search histories are being tracked.

How Do We Explain Patron Privacy in a World of Target Markets?
Laura Crossett writes an insightful article about privacy and library patrons.

Lauren Goode at AllThingsD writes about a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project conducted in April/May 2011, which sampled more than 2,200 U.S. adults 18 and older. The study found that privacy concerns have increased and that many are being more cautious with their friends and online content.

“More than 60 percent of social media users said last year that they deleted people from their friends lists, up from 56 percent in 2009; and 26 percent of users who keep their profiles private say they apply additional privacy settings to limit what some friends can see.

Profile “pruning” — deleting comments friends leave and untagging photos — is also on the rise, the report says.”

Barry Friedman, a professor at the New York University School of Law and the author of “The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution”, writes about Privacy, Technology and Law for the New York Times Sunday Review Opinion section. This thought-provoking article raises questions we all need to consider in this digital age.

“EVERY day, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our e-mail, Google searches, online banking and shopping records. Does the fact that so many of us live our lives online mean we have given the government wide-open access to all that information? “

Andy Woodworth at Agnostic, Maybe has written a great article about the Overdrive-Amazon e-book arrangement and the reactions in the biblio-blogosphere titled Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed. This insightful article offers the author’s own take on the situation and does a great job of summarizing other librarians’ viewpoints as well. Here’s just the first paragraph:

“Amazon and Overdrive are back in the online librarian conversation (again), this time lead off by a video rant by Sarah Houghton along with posts by David Lee King and the Annoyed Librarian. (There was a post by Bobbi Newman on the topic about a month ago when it first came out as well as my own take.) It’s being described by such terms like screwing, sucking, and other terms to make some conservative filtering software blush. “

Alan Henry at Lifehacker posits that Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web; Here’s How to Stop It. This helpful article discusses what to do to ensure that your privacy is protected.

“For quite some time now, Facebook’s user tracking hasn’t been limited to your time on the site: any third-party web site or service that’s connected to Facebook or that uses a Like button is sending over your information, without your explicit permission. However, Winer noticed something mostly overlooked in last week’s Facebook changes: Facebook’s new Open Graph-enabled social web apps all send information to Facebook and can post to your profile or share with your friends whether you want them to or not. Essentially, by using these apps, just reading an article, listening to a song, or watching a video, you’re sending information to Facebook which can then be automatically shared with your friends or added to your profile, and Facebook doesn’t ask for your permission to do it.”

Gary D. Price at INFOdocket writes about eBooks, Privacy, and the Library. This thought-provoking article discusses the fact that while most libraries are using third-party services such as OverDrive to provide access to e-books and other resources, there are many concerns about patron privacy which need to be addressed.

“My point is not whether this particular service is good or bad, but rather that we need to be providing clear and accessible disclosure and transparency with users for the service (and all other services) where an individual’s data leaves the library’s control. I think we’ve all seen what happens when a privacy issue suddenly comes to light, generating all manner of negative publicity. We share books, serials, audio, video, and other information. And we must be sharing as clearly as possible what happens to a user’s data — and let our users know when any service may compromise the level of privacy they’ve come to expect and appreciate from their library.”

Jennifer Van Grove at Mashable discusses Location & Privacy: Why Flickr’s New Feature May Change Photo Sharing. This is an excellent article about the need for new privacy measures in this age of sharing location information.

“The mobile photo sharing boom brings with it a host of new privacy concerns — it’s easier than ever to inadvertently share your location with each photo you post to the web. Does the era of the always-on location-aware device demand a new genre of privacy settings? More robust geo-privacy settings, perhaps? That’s the motivation behind Flickr geofences, a newly added precautionary and practical feature that allows users to map out zones and set distinct location sharing settings for those areas.”

Ilana Westerman writes for UX Magazine about Making Online Privacy Make Sense. She brings up some very insightful points about online privacy, its negative and positive connoations, as well as user expectations. This article has some great ideas for positioning the concept of privacy to students and library patrons.

“Online privacy is a hassle. People don’t really want to have to manage their digital trails as they go about daily activities, however important it may be. People aren’t excited about managing their privacy online; they’re excited about seeing photos from friends, researching something interesting, and getting things done. As a result, people aren’t clear on what really happens with their data online and become upset when things aren’t as private as they expected, and this is when problems arise for online services.”

Ben Parr at Mashable reports that Facebook Makes Massive Privacy & Tagging Changes, and then provides a Big Privacy Changes Overview. Here are some of the topics covered:

• Privacy Controls: Profile Editing
• Tag Approvals
• Photo Tag Approvals
• View Profile As
• Greater Control of Status Updates
• Adding Locations to Status Updates
• More Control Over Photo Privacy

Melanie Pinola at Lifehacker has created a A Guide to Google+ Privacy and Information Control. This excellent post has all you need to know to get set up on Google’s new social network:

“This guide will take you through setting up Google+’s circles with an emphasis on how they work from a privacy perspective, how to control what others can see about you on your profile, your options for selectively sharing posts with others, and some miscellaneous settings you’ll want to tweak—like only allowing friends to start Huddles with you.”

I’ve always been a strong proponent of the ability to balance the personal and professional on social websites like Facebook, through Friends Lists, Privacy Settings, and careful judgment. But I have to admit that over the past few months I’ve started to have doubts. While I have been diligent in my use of custom settings and my own discretion, Facebook is a social entity and therefore not everything can be strictly controlled – friends can make inappropriate remarks in comments and Wall posts, Facebook privacy settings often change without warning, and due to human error or absentmindedness, some friends may not make it onto the appropriate Lists. In sum, I’m beginning to wonder if the constant vigilance is worth the trade-off of maintaining one account.

The Lockdown
I’ve got my Facebook profile pretty locked down. While my friends are allowed to make posts on my Wall, their tagged photos and videos do not get shown to anyone but me. I have Friends Lists set up for nearly every area of my life and most of my status updates are limited to viewing by my “Real-Life” friends. Photo albums which I create are almost always hidden from my “Professional” friends. I’ve noticed that many of my friends have even disabled the ability for people to see who their other friends are, while others have blocked friends from posting to their wall or making comments on any of their posts.

Friends…Gotta “Like” ‘Em
Since I want to interact with my friends and professional connections via the network, my friends are able to post to my wall and make comments on my posts and photos. But I must say that I have on occasion seen friends – both personal and professional – post truly cringe-worthy thoughts on my Wall as well as their own. And this is the risk that we all take when friending new people on the social network. Oftentimes we may not even know the person we are adding to our circle, they may be a potential professional contact, or someone we’ve just met at an event. Short of requesting a writing sample and a pledge to post responsibly, we are pretty much rolling the dice with new contacts. I’ve often wished for more granularity with Facebook’s privacy settings, such as the ability to place permissions on individual friends, or restrictions on individual photos within albums, however with several hundred contacts and photos, I don’t know if I’d really want to be bothered.

Alternatives
And that brings me to the alternatives – what are they? One option is to create a completely separate, personal Facebook account to which I migrate all of my existing “real-life” friends. I’ve noticed quite a few of my friends from other fields have done this already by simply not friending anyone professional through Facebook, but limiting those friends to LinkedIn only. In the library world it’s not so simple as we all use Facebook as a communication medium as well as a social network. When I first set up my Facebook account I was determined to use it only as a professional tool, however Web-based social networking has become so pervasive in our culture that nearly everyone I meet soon asks me, “What’s your Facebook?”.

I’m curious as to how other people are dealing with balancing the personal and professional on social networks such as Facebook? Have you shifted to completely separate personas, or have you found a comfortable middle ground?

Kristin Burnham at Network World writes about Google+ Privacy: 5 Settings You Need to Know. If you’re considering joining Google’s new social network, you’ll want to check out this post which discusses the following privacy concerns:

1. How to Prevent Anyone on Google+ from Emailing You
2. How to Selectively Disable Post Resharing on Google+
3. How to Disable Google+ Email Notifications
4. How to Export Your Google+ Data
5. How to Quit Google+

Gil Zimmermann at Mashable talks about 5 Things You Need to Know About the Security of Google Apps. This quick post discusses many of the concerns organizations face when moving to the cloud. These are the topics that are covered:

1. Sharing Permissions are in the Hands of the User
2. Data Location
3. Access Privileges
4. Data Leakage
5. Data Loss

Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker creates The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing Your Facebook Privacy. This is an excellent tutorial complete with screenshots and easy to understand explanations for each setting. Here are some of the points discussed:

• The Basic Privacy Settings: What You Share
• Lesser-Known Settings You’ll Want to Tweak
• Let Others See Posts or Photos Your Friends Are Tagged In
• Turn Off Facebook Places
• Turn Off Facial Recognition
• Turn On HTTPS to Lock Down Your Private Information
• Turn On Two-Factor Authentication to Keep Others from Logging Into Your Account
• Facebook Disconnect
• AdBlock Plus
• F.B. Purity and Better Facebook

Image: Flickr user Clazzi

Austin Carr at Fast Company writes about Untangling The Incredibly Complicated, Puzzling World Of Online Privacy. This is a growing concern, especially with regard to mobile devices and new location data that’s being harvested.

“Senators Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal introduced a bill yesterday that takes direct aim at online privacy. After it was reported recently that tech giants like Apple and Google might be collecting location data from unwitting customers, public officials raced to put together legislation that would give the public more control over personal information. If passed, the bill would require developers to obtain consent before collecting and sharing geo-location data.”

via Trevor Dawes