Michael Zimmer, PhD, is a digital privacy and data ethics scholar at Marquette University
A number of years ago, Daniel Howe and Helen Nissenbaum at New York University developed and released TrackMeNot, a lightweight Firefox browser extension that protects users against search data profiling by issuing randomized queries to popular search-engines with fake data.…
Read More PostPref: A Facebook App to Help Manage Photo Privacy
Recently, a Facebook dataset was released consisting of the complete set of users from the Facebook networks at 100 American institutions, and all of the in-network “friendship” links between those users as they existed at a single moment of time in September 2005. Surprisingly, it initially included each users unique Facebook ID, meaning the presumed "anonymous" dataset could be easily re-identified, potentially putting the personal information of 1.2 million Facebook users at risk.
Last week I attended Internet Research 11.0: Sustainability, Participation, Action, the 11th annual conference for the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), in Gothenburg, Sweden. This is the conference I look forward to the most each year, thanks to the steady…
Read More Debrief: Internet Research 11.0 Conference (Gothenburg, Sweden)
A few days ago I blogged about how I was able to check my wife into a local liquor store using Facebook Places without her permission, despite Facebook's insistence that "No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission". This check-in has remained visible in my news feed, and depending on my privacy settings, may be viewable by any logged in Facebook user. Presumably there also is a database at Facebook that contains a record of my checking-in my wife into this location. Again, all without my wife's explicit consent to participating in this new "feature". Now, four days later, my wife had a chance to react to the notification she received from Facebook regarding my tagging her, and I thought I'd share a few more reactions to her attempt to opt-out of Places altogether.
Facebook has finally launched its location-based service: Places. Places allows Facebook users to "check in" wherever they are using a mobile device, and let's their friends know where they are at the moment. Facebook has tried to do a better job addressing privacy with Places compared to previous launches of new "features". Particularly, Facebook brags that "no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission." But as I've played around with the service, I've uncovered a problem with Facebook's assertion that "no one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission."
In response to recent Facebook privacy fiascoes -- the privacy upgrade downgrade and inevitable backtracking, Zuckerberg's (and other exec's) various ill-informed remarks, etc, etc -- I've co-authored an op-ed with Chris Hoofnagle, the director of information privacy programs at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law & Technology, where we criticize Facebook's "perfection of privacy public relations." The piece appears in The Huffington Post, and is titled "How to Win Friends and Manipulate People". Here's an excerpt: These events represent the perfection of privacy public relations. Guided by earlier battles fought by tobacco and drug companies, information-intensive firms have learned how to use rhetoric to distract the public while successfully implementing new programs. They are the Machiavellis of privacy.
GigaOm highlights an interview with Nancy Baym, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas and author of Personal Connections in the Digital Age, on the limitations in Facebook's approach to privacy. The interview covers various important issues,…
Read More Baym: Facebook’s Views on Privacy are “Fundamentally Naive and Utopian”
By now, this series of events is very familiar: Facebook launches new "feature" with little or no warning Feature is automatically activated for millions of users Users get confused and angry Backlash and criticism occurs; users threaten to leave Zuckerberg…
On Sunday, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence regarding the most recent spate of privacy problems with his social networking service, and published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled, "From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings." I finally got around to giving it a close reading today, and my initial reaction was visceral -- it pissed me off. In just over 500 words, Zuckerberg succeeded in sounding condescending, bragging about things Facebook can't really brag about, and over-simplifying the core issues at hand. But in the end this doesn't matter, because I don't even think Facebook's 400 million users were the intended audience.
Last Friday (May 21, 2010), I had the great pleasure of being a guest on Science Friday, the weekly science and technology show hosted by Ira Flatow, airing live each Friday on NPR's popular Talk of the Nation radio show.…
Read More Science Friday: Protecting Your Privacy On Social Networking Sites
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