Watch out for those 1990s Hackers
Rather than deconstruct the magic of this video, I'll let you. Enjoy!
HACKING IS EASY! from Airwave Ranger on Vimeo.
Connectivity is a Marketer's Dream
Just another snazzy day in the life of selling you items you don't even realize you're craving.
NY Times writer, Stephanie Clifford, reports
Through smartphones that signal someone’s location, stores and brands like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi are getting live information about when and where people are shopping. Some companies are turning Foursquare into a virtual loyalty-card program, while others are creating their own location applications, offering customers discounts or other rewards for shopping.
“It gives us immediate feedback for what’s going on in the marketplace,” said Margery Schelling, chief marketing officer of PepsiCo Foodservice. “That’s invaluable.”
When Issues of Privacy Go "Viral"
A broad coalition of technology companies, including AT&T, Google and Microsoft, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum said Tuesday that it would push Congress to strengthen online privacy laws to protect private digital information from government access.
While this proposed legislation would tighten privacy rights for online users to prevent the government from accessing our information, these protections don't acknowledge the ways in which our data is mined on a daily basis for potential marketing targets. Do we accept consumer data mining because we're cool with free market capitalism? Why is it more acceptable for a marketer to manipulate me while I assume Big Brother is coming to take away my rights when a governing body accesses my personal information? How are they different? One is an illusion of free choice while the second doesn't even try to disguise its ability to mine my data.
In "Mastercard Set to Open an Online Shopping Mall," Andrew Martin focuses on how Mastercard is creating an online shopping site, Mastercard Marketplace, that will use a new technology to monitor customer behavior all over the internet to better target the customer. As part of his report, he interviews Anita L. Allen, a law professor who studies privacy issues at the University of Pennsylvania. Allen says that as consumers give up more private information for short-term gains,
“'In the end, we turn into citizens who live in a world where we have no control over our own data.'”
Martin's article works well with the Helft piece because both suggest free market capitalism as a naturalized entity that does not seem to concern people as much as governmental invasions of privacy.
This recent editorial in the NY Times discusses online privacy in connection to government officials having no real legal prohibitions to prevent them from invading a user's privacy. However, there is a move toward developing legislation that will take issues of internet privacy into account. I do think this is important, but again, I find it ironic how willingly people accept being marketed to because of data mining.
In "Bringing a Smarter Search to Twitter, With Fees," Todd Woody highlights the strong connection between marketing and internet use. Here, people are willing to pay for a Twitter service that will (like Google) decide which feeds are most useful to the user. That service will use a data collecting technology to customize info for users, but this information can easily be used for marketing purposes, too.
Woody talks with the folks at the forefront of this entrepreneurial venture:
“TweetUp is to Twitter what Google is to the Web,” Mr. Case said.
Here is how the service will work, according to Mr. Gross: people can bid on key words or phrases, like “iPad” or “solar energy,” to push their Twitter profile or posts to the top of TweetUp’s rankings. Bids begin at 1 cent and people will pay each time their profile or a post shows up in a search.
Mr. Gross stressed that bids were not required to appear in search results. The service will also calculate rankings based on an algorithm that uses data from a company called Klout that measures a Twitter user’s influence. Bit.ly, a service that shortens Web addresses for display on Twitter, will provide data on how often people click on a link in a post.
So who does Mr. Gross expect to pay to put something as ephemeral as a Twitter post on top of the charts? “I think everyone who is looking to build a following will pay,” he said. That means companies that want to build their brands as well as individuals who hope to drive readers to their Web sites.
Beyond explicit economic reasons for data mining (what folks are often up in arms about in relation to e-privacy), many online newspaper services are asking whether the veil of 'privacy' for their viewers should be pulled back a bit. Richard Pérez-Peña reports in "News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments" that the days of unmediated nasty comments or the prevalent 'LOL' and 'So Random' internet shout-outs may be numbered:
When news sites, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments, the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a given on news sites.
The Washington Post plans to revise its comments policy over the next several months, and one of the ideas under consideration is to give greater prominence to commenters using real names.
The New York Times, The Post and many other papers have moved in stages toward requiring that people register before posting comments, providing some information about themselves that is not shown onscreen.
...“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”
Privacy: an Academic Perspective
It's easy to find scads of information online about privacy issues and news, but what is the academic world saying? A quick search on my school's library brought up a multitude of articles. Timeliness seems to become more prevalent in today's age of information, so I decided to review a couple of the most recently published articles.
Consumer Trust in the Online Retail Context: Exploring the Antecedents and Consequences
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 27(4): 323–346 (April 2010)
This article explored many issues surrounding web site quality and usability as well as consumer trust, intentions and attitudes. Through prior research, the authors developed 21 hypotheses and conducted their own Internet-based survey, which yielded 452 usable records (95% between the ages of 18 and 35.) The authors, in true academic fashion, delve deep into their findings with mathematical analyses. In short:
The results show that Web site quality features, including usability, security and privacy assurances, and product information quality, significantly and positively influence trust.
In other words, this study's main (and most compelling) finding is this: "This study shows that having an easy-to-use Web site is the key to e-commerce success."
I guess good design and ethics have become one in the same!
Disclosure of personal and contact information by young people in social networking sites: An analysis using Facebook profiles as an example
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Vol 6(1): 81-101 (April 2010)
This article discussed a lot of the same type of information that I've been seeing lately: Facebook (and other social networking) users tend to reveal a lot of personal information and are unaware of their privacy options or who can view their profile. They are also, for the most part, unaware of their loss of privacy just by using these sites.
What I found most interesting about this article, however, was the discussion of the definition of privacy, broken into four "concepts":
1. Control over information about oneself.
2. Control over one's own personal information.
Westin, moreover, argues that individuals are continually engaged in a process of adjustment to find a balance between the desire for privacy and the desire for disclosure of one’s self to others.
3. "The third concept focuses on privacy standing in competition with two very different ideas: the 'monitored’ and the ‘searchable’ part of anyone’s life (Lessing 1998)."
According to Lessing (1998: 1), privacy is ‘what’s left after one subtracts, as it were, the monitored, and the searchable, from the balance of social life’. He continues, stating that ‘life where less is monitored is a life more private’ and ‘life where less can be searched is a life more private’
4. "The fourth concept sees privacy as ‘the immunity from the judgment of others’ (Johnson 1992: 272), referring to those aspects of a person’s life that are culturally recognized as being safe and protected from others’ judgements."
I think that, while the first and second "concepts" are what are generally thought of when the issue of privacy is brought up, the third and fourth concepts have become increasingly apparent in the age of online social media.
It's certainly true in my own life. Ten years ago, I started a "blog" (which wasn't called a blog back then). It was completely public, but I never thought that would be a concern. After all, the Internet wasn't the animal it is today; hardly anyone blogged, and "google" had yet to become a verb. The blog attracted a readership and was a joy to keep up. I was devastated when some undesirable family found it and judged me for what they'd found. They didn't understand the creative freedoms I was taking. They didn't "get" it, and there was nothing I could do to change that.
After that, I discovered privacy options and have been using them religiously since. However, I often find myself grappling with Westin's discussion of the balance between the desire for privacy, and the desire for self disclosure. The "delete", "edit", and "remove" buttons have become quite familiar to me, and I'm not afraid to use them. I often miss the random connections of strangers, though; something impossible to obtain when everything is "hidden." I've attempted completely public blogs since, but none of them gave me the same feeling as that first one. I'm always paranoid that someone undesirable is going to come across it. I find myself analyzing every sentence I write. It will never be the same. It's true what they say: Ignorance is bliss.
googleprivacy channel
YouTube - googleprivacy's Channel
Apparently Google has an entire youtube channel devoted to privacy issues. Currently, the channel houses 49 videos. The main page video makes mention of Google's Data Liberation Front site, which states:
The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products. This is our mission statement:
Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.
Interesting! I will definitely be experimenting with this site in the near future.
Congressman Wants Consumers to Have Personal Information Take-Down Right
TechLaw: Congressman Wants Consumers to Have Personal Information Take-Down Right:
There is a lot that can be said about this legislation, none of it positive, except for the fact that there is little chance it will be enacted into law. Nobody in Washington is talking about giving individuals this level of control over their personal information. The FTC is worried about consumers' lack of understanding about what is being done with their personal information and their inability to exert meaningful control over that. Businesses would like lawmakers to focus on personal information misuse and let the marketplace decide how much information collection and processing is desirable. (This is how Washington solved the Great Anti-Spyware Scare: it legislated against the really bad stuff, but gave business free rein for everything else that's not deceptive or criminal.) Nobody is talking about giving consumers a quasi take-down right.
Cloud computing: Privacy and trust up in the cloud
BBC News - Cloud computing: Privacy and trust up in the cloud
This article addresses the issue of privacy "in the cloud," but not in much detail, and definitely seems biased toward the companies who offer these services. It states:
Dropbox has more than four million customers who can upload digital content which is permanently synced across a number of their devices.
Adam Gross, senior vice president of marketing for the storage service said the cloud needs the trust of users.
He believes the cloud is "helping people keep their files backed up and safe and secure, rather than the old model where each individual PC user had to be responsible for it alone."
The following part of the article was of great interest to me. I use Gmail and Google Docs quite a bit for schoolwork (and even work-related things) and definitely take for granted that those documents are always available from any computer. Rarely do I also back up the files on a jump drive or some other tangible media.
Many students have become heavy users of the free collaborative online tools that are based in the cloud. This has prompted some colleges to go as far as banning cloud computing completely.
Others like the University of San Francisco have to send out constant reminders that trouble on the net is unacceptable as a classroom excuse.
Not relying on the cloud entirely is one concern, but critics advise students to ponder on the physical location of their work, issues over ownership, and the rising fees for accessing it.
These factors may have to be taken into account by governments too in the future, and legislation could be needed to define new parameters for consumers.
Moving information to a virtual computer puts someone else in control of security, and there is an ever-present risk from hackers.
There, near the bottom of the article, the possibility of hackers was finally mentioned. I decided to do a bit more research on privacy in the cloud and found this article, which took a much more frank look at the issues of privacy in cloud computing and provided several examples of what hackers have accomplished. For example:
There already have been examples of privacy and security problems with cloud services provider Google. In March 2009, it was revealed, “Google discovered a privacy glitch that inappropriately shared access to a small fraction of word-processing and presentation documents stored on the company’s online Google Docs service.” Though the technical problem was fixed, customers’ sensitive data was exposed, and consumers had no control over the security situation. In July, A hacker was able break into a Twitter employee’s e-mail account and through that was able to get to confidential business documents that were stored on the business version of Google Apps.
Global Free Trade Zone Labor via Internet
Today's NY Times "Technology" section ran an article that highlights how an internet security measure like captchas (a mechanism that forces the user to input a string of words to prevent the proliferation of spam) matters little when spammers outsource labor to willing workers in developing countries. Vikas Bajaj writes
Sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end deciphering convoluted characters and typing them into a box is monotonous work. And the pay is not great when compared to more traditional data-entry jobs.
Still, it appears to be attractive enough to lure young people in developing countries where even 50 cents an hour is considered a decent wage. Unskilled male farm workers earn about $2 a day in many parts of India.
Ariful Islam Shaon, a 20-year-old college student in Bangladesh, said he has a team of 30 other students who work for him filling in captchas. (The term is a loose acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.”)
Learning to Profile the Internet User Profile
Lohr found that
"You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing.
'Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,' said Harold Abelson, the computer science professor at M.I.T. 'In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.'
Collected together, the pool of information about each individual can form a distinctive 'social signature,' researchers say."
Lohr learned that "the F.T.C. and Congress are weighing steps like tighter industry requirements and the creation of a 'do not track' list, similar to the federal 'do not call' list, to stop online monitoring," which does show one of the ways in which legislative bodies are working with the transition to digital culture.
Lohr closes his article by quoting Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies social networks, Kleinberg is "skeptical that rules will have much impact," and suggests to internet users that "'when you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.'"
All the World's A Stage (Even Your Seedy Moments during Cosmetic Surgery)
In an article in today's NY Times, Brad Stone reports about the escalation of the public persona (I just want to be loved!):
" A wave of Web start-ups aims to help people indulge their urge to divulge — from sites like Blippy, which Mr. Brooks used to broadcast news of what he bought, to Foursquare, a mobile social network that allows people to announce their precise location to the world, to Skimble, an iPhone application that people use to reveal, say, how many push-ups they are doing and how long they spend in yoga class.
Not that long ago, many were leery of using their real names on the Web, let alone sharing potentially embarrassing personal details about their shopping and lifestyle habits. But these start-ups are exploiting a mood of online openness, despite possible hidden dangers.... To Silicon Valley’s deep thinkers, this is all part of one big trend: People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations — and little jolts of ego gratification."
When Privacy is No Longer Convenient
On February 9, 2010, Google provided an extensive Gmail privacy notice on their site. Here are two areas on the site that might be of interests to readers:
Information sharing and onward transfer
--When you send email, Google includes information such as your email address and the email itself as part of that email.
--We provide advertisers only aggregated non-personal information such as the number of times one of their ads was clicked.
--We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal information with any third parties except in the limited circumstances described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when we believe we are required to do so by law.
Your choices
--You may change your Gmail account settings through the Gmail "settings" section.
--You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.
The public's criticism of Google certainly extends back further than recent issues with China.
This 2007 CBC news clip highlights Google privacy issues beyond the U.S. borders. Newscaster Nancy Wilson amps up the fear factor usually devoted to Fox News but does so with an endearing Canadian accent. Bill O'Reilly, take note. Please practice your Canadian accent.
Here's another clip that relies upon similar scare tactics but provides spiffy graphics and a British accent. (Anyone seen 28 Days Later recently?)
A year later, the impetuous Rachel Maddow from MSNBC interviews CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, about Google privacy issues and highlights how our good friend, free market capitalism, will play a role in determining at what point Google users will shift to a less "sinister" competitor.
Is Internet Democracy Just Code for American-Style Democracy?
I'm the last person to suggest that someone's free speech should be limited, but after having lived in conservative communities in China and Malaysia, I'm aware that my view of free speech is politically, culturally, and geographically specific and naturalized, so it's easy for me to argue that anyone out to regulate content or use of the internet is wrong. Still, even if I can't escape my sense of democracy as a human right, it's important for me as a thinker and writer to consider the ways in which other countries are handling issues of internet democratization without hasty conclusions about people and places that are quite different from my comfort zone.
Below are the two major conversations occurring in Indonesia about Internet regulation:
1. “We want to limit the distribution of negative content like pornography, gambling, violence, blasphemy,” Mr. Tifatul (the minister of communication and information technology) said, adding that online content should be regulated in such a way as to preserve “our values, also our culture and also our norms.”
2. Similar to the discussions I've shared recently with colleagues in a graduate courses about computers and writing, Indonesian Ramadhan Pohan, a member of Parliament and a former newspaper reporter, aruges that "those online movements had deeply unsettled politicians, bureaucrats and even hospital administrators unused to such direct — and successful — challenges to their authority."
“The problem is that many officials in government are paranoid about this new online content,” Mr. Pohan said. “They are old-style politicians and bureaucrats who, if you ask them, don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account. They don’t realize that in terms of democracy and freedom of expression, we’ve reached a kind of point of no return.”
"Choose Privacy Week" is coming up
The first-ever Choose Privacy Week will take place May 2-8, 2010.
Choose Privacy Week is a new initiative that invites library users into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age. The campaign gives libraries the tools they need to educate and engage users, and gives citizens the resources to think critically and make more informed choices about their privacy.
Choose Privacy Week Trailer on Vimeo
Choose Privacy Week page on Facebook
Facebook's Social Web: How to Protect Your Privacy
Facebook's Social Web: How to Protect Your Privacy - PCWorld
Protecting your privacy on Facebook can feel like a full-time job. The social network has made a habit of tweaking its privacy policies with some regularity -- and in many cases, it's up to you to take proactive steps in order to keep your info out of the public eye.
This week's introduction of Facebook's "Open Graph" is no exception. By default, you're now opted in to the company's new social sharing services, and this time, they stretch way beyond the confines of Facebook.com.
If you're comfortable with that, more power to you. But if you'd rather keep your personal preferences private, here's a step-by-step guide to taking back control.
I consider myself fairly well-versed when it comes to online social networking, but even I have become confused with Facebook's changes over the past few months. Some options moved, some changed, some disappeared all together (or so it seems.) This is a great guide, but I find it ridiculous that it even needed to be written in the first place. I have a feeling my days on Facebook are numbered.
Edit to add: Here is a tool you can run to see what of your information is viewable publicly through the Facebook Graph API.
Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information
Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information | Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Today, Facebook removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, 'including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests' will now be transformed into 'connections,' meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.
Great, now I have to try and find where these settings are and fix them yet again. If I hadn't been researching for this blog, I would not have even known about this!
Privacy police take aim at social media giants
Privacy police take aim at social media giants - news aggregated by newzfor.me - feeder for twitter
By flexing their muscle, the regulators are seeking to corral rapidly-growing web giants, including Google and Facebook, that now house billions of gigabytes of information about users age, race, location and web-viewing habits.
Google launches new government transparency tool
FP Tech Desk: Google launches new government transparency tool - FP Posted:
Google Inc. has launched a new tool which the search engine giant hopes will shed some light on how it handles the sensitive private information of its users and how it responds to requests for information from the governments of the world.
Here it is: Google Government Requests
snopes.com: Spokeo
Spokeo is one of many sites now operating on the Internet that aggregate and display personal information collected from a variety of public sources (such as social networking accounts, blog posts, phone book listings, customer-submitted reviews, real estate listings, etc., as well as from databases of other information aggregators) and sell detailed reports on individuals to anyone who pays for them.
I found out about this site through a friend who posted it to her Facebook wall. It intrigued me, and I proceeded to look up just about everyone that I know well. I noticed that while most information was accurate (for instance: age and address), a lot was not (for instance: zodiac sign was off by one for just about everyone.) The "meme" on Facebook informed everyone that they could simply remove their information from the website, which seemed to satisfy most people. I couldn't help but wonder, however, how that would really solve the problem. As Snopes states:
Spokeo does have a privacy policy that allows you to request that Spokeo remove your listing from public searches, but it's important to understand that even if you block your Spokeo listing, your personal information will still be available through the underlying sources used by Spokeo. Those third-party records will still exist and will still be publicly accessible, so the same information provided by Spokeo will still be available to others.
And where exactly does Spokeo get their information? Their website states that Spokeo collects their information from "phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites, and other public sources," with specific mention of only whitepages.com and zillow.com. Snopes goes on to discuss their success with blocking records, and speculates on Spokeo's collection methods, by stating:
Our repeated trials with requesting the blocking of a particular record through Spokeo's privacy page have found the procedure to be highly questionable: no attempt is made to verify that the person requesting the blocking of a record is the person identified by that record, our efforts have never resulted in a successfully blocked record, and Spokeo's customer service group has not responded to any inquiries. All of this has led some to speculate that one of Spokeo's core businesses is actually the collecting of e-mail addresses.