Thoughts on Privacy and the Use of Facebook to Recruit Research Subjects

Recently, I was approached by a team of researchers concerned with the research ethics issues related to using Facebook to recruit human subjects. Specifically, the team was planning to use Facebook advertisements in order to target certain users for a…

Privacy Week 2012 Film screening: Big Brother, Big Business: The Data-Mining and Surveillance Industries

Join the UW-Milwaukee Center for Information Policy Research and the UWM Libraries for a special screening of the short documentary film "Big Brother, Big Business: The Data-Mining and Surveillance Industries" in celebration of Choose Privacy Week, an annual initiative of…

Concurring Opinions hosting Online Symposium on Configuring the Networked Self

I'm honored and thrilled to be a part of an online symposium featuring Julie Cohen's important new book, Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice, hosted at Concurring Opinions the week of March 5. Thanks…

ALA Choose Privacy Week Webinar: Youth Privacy Attitudes

In preparation for Choose Privacy Week,  the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom and American Libraries magazine hosted a webinar today, featuring the following panel of contributors: Angela Maycock, assistant director, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy…

Facebook Data of 1.2 Million Users from 2005 Released: Limited Exposure, but Very Problematic

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.