Posts tagged: privacy
- On privacy, choice and informed consent
- The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is [...] [14 May 2010]
- A ‘privacy bait and switch’
- The complaint has over 150 numbered paragraphs, runs 38 pages, and includes a lot of legalese. But the basic claim is simple: Facebook pulled a “privacy bait and switch.” They told users to sign up and provide personal information under one set of privacy policies, and then they changed the policies. It’s like if someone [...] [14 May 2010]
- Big brother is Google
- One reaction is to diversify: Hotmail instead of Gmail, MapQuest instead of Google Maps, AOL Instant Messenger instead of Google Chat ’ though that would mean losing the accumulated benefits of linked services. Another reasonable response is to focus efforts on improving our (new) media literacy so that we’re more mindful of how much even [...] [18 Feb 2010]
- To password mask or not password mask?
- That is the question Jakob Nielsen sparked with last summer’s column: Stop Password Masking. In this week’s A List Apart, Lyle Mullican discusses The Problem with Passwords, and writes: However, making such a sweeping change to a fundamental user interaction could present serious problems. Consider some contexts in which a password might need to be [...] [9 Feb 2010]
- On bringing clarity to privacy policies
- If Privacy Icons become widely adopted (and I think Mozilla is in a unique position to help make that happen) then the correlation of good companies using the icons and bad companies not using the icons becomes rather strong. If a privacy policy doesn’t include any icons it’s synonymous with that policy making no guarantees [...] [13 Jan 2010]
- On visibility in public
- By and large, those who are looking are those who hold power over the person being observed. Parents look. Teachers look. Employers look. Governments look. Corporations look. These people are often looking to judge or manipulate. Given the powerful position they are in, those doing the looking often think that they have the right to [...] [10 Dec 2009]
- Remy Sharp introduces you to web storage in HTML5
- From his 24 Ways piece, Breaking Out The Edges of The Browser: The Web Storage API is basically cookies on steroids, a unhealthy dosage of steroids. Cookies are always a pain to work with. First of all you have the problem of setting, changing and deleting them. Typically solved by Googling and blindly relying on [...] [2 Dec 2009]
- Memory and the Internet
- Via NPR’s latest Technology podcast, a piece on the permanent memory of digital data, and what one computer scientist is doing about it. Digital Data Make For A Really Permanent Record Vanish: Vanish: Enhancing the Privacy of the Web with Self-Destructing Data [6 Nov 2009]
- Hunch.com: a review after 60 minutes of tinkering
- Earlier today, I received an email from Caterina Fake, team inviting me to check out her latest web venture. Fake, as you probably know, was a founding member of the photo-sharing community Flickr. Flickr was sold to Yahoo! in 2005 and last summer Fake left Yahoo!, presumably to start her Next Big Thing. Well that [...] [28 Mar 2009]
- Twitter, privacy, and informational self-determination
- UPDATE: Tweetdeck does, in fact, tell you whether someone’s updates are protected if you click on the user name and view his or her profile. It does not however do this at a glance. If you’re not listening from the CBC‘s Search Engine podcast, shame on you. It’s a kick ass show that looks at [...] [23 Mar 2009]