The fol­low­ing news story came out the other day .. which serves as the basis for this entry …

Hello, Big Brother: Dig­i­tal sen­sors are watch­ing us

As dig­i­tal pri­vacy is an impor­tant (and increas­ing com­pli­cated ) topic, it would be impos­si­ble to dis­cuss it in just one blog entry (so expect to see more dis­cus­sion on this topic in future entries).   This entry is to start the process of pri­vacy aware­ness, so lets take a closer look at how you can “Keep Pace” with dig­i­tal privacy !

You can’t con­trol what you can’t con­trol — or can you ?

Unless you become a her­mit or choose to wear masks in pub­lic, it will be hard (if not impos­si­ble) to avoid hav­ing your image cap­tured by the grow­ing num­bers of secu­rity camera’s or pub­lic webcam’s.    So while you may not have con­trol over what goes on in pub­lic set­tings you can focus on those things you DO have con­trol over — namely how you “give away” per­sonal infor­ma­tion with­out even real­iz­ing it

Pri­vacy isn’t so pri­vate anymore

If a stranger came up to you and started detailed ques­tions about your per­sonal life, the odds are you wouldn’t answer them.   And why would you?  There are many rea­sons why you keep per­sonal infor­ma­tion to yourself.

But you do give away per­sonal infor­ma­tion all the time and tech­nol­ogy assists in that process.   Its just slower and less obvi­ous — con­sider the following:

• Credit Cards
• Loy­alty Cards
• Rewards pro­grams

From the users per­spec­tive the value of these “tech­nolo­gies” focuses on finan­cial incen­tive (cash rewards / dis­counts) or con­ve­nience.    But in exchange for that value, you are giv­ing up small amounts of per­sonal data — which in this case con­sists of what you have pur­chased and when (think of it as your buy­ing habits/patterns).

In most cases, this is an accept­able trade-off .   The user receives finan­cial benefit(s) and the retailer receives the ben­e­fit of an infor­ma­tion store that can be used to deliver prod­ucts / ser­vices that improve the cus­tomer experience.

You don’t know what you don’t know

The “pri­vacy jour­ney” takes an inter­est­ing turn when you start con­sid­er­ing other technologies:

• Inter­net search engines
• Social Net­work­ing tools (like Facebook)
• Loca­tion based appli­ca­tions (4Square)
• Dig­i­tal Pic­tures (wait till you hear about this one)

The equa­tion of get­ting value while giv­ing up per­sonal data is still valid.  Even if you under­stand what it is you are giv­ing up, you might not under­stand the pos­si­ble impact — con­sider the following:

Inter­net search engines — When you use a search engine (like Google) you leave behind a his­tory of your search habits.   Read about this case where the defen­dants search his­tory was used against him ! —   Mur­der, She Googled ..

Social Net­work­ing tools — When you use a ser­vice like Face­book, you are encour­aged to engage in shar­ing infor­ma­tion with your net­work of  “friends” (some of whom you prob­a­bly don’t know that well) and you can unin­ten­tion­ally share infor­ma­tion you might not want oth­ers to know about.   Con­sider the impact of this arti­cle .. “Face­book: The best way to catch a cheat­ing spouse?”

Loca­tion based appli­ca­tions — There are an evolv­ing group of appli­ca­tions  (i.e. foursquare) that allow you to “check in” your cur­rent loca­tion with a mobile device (such as your phone) which will alert your friends to your cur­rent loca­tion.   An unin­tended con­se­quence of using these tools is that you may give away pat­terns of your move­ments — or worse — you are telling peo­ple you aren’t home !

Dig­i­tal Pic­tures — It is com­mon for peo­ple to take pic­tures with their smart phones, and imme­di­ately upload the pic­ture to the Face­book or Twit­ter.    Few peo­ple know that mobile phones apply loca­tion data  to each pic­ture (called geo­t­ag­ging) and that infor­ma­tion can be read by other ser­vices to iden­tify where the pic­ture was take.   So if you are on vaca­tion and start tak­ing pic­tures, peo­ple can deduce where you are (or aren’t !)    Read - Dig­i­tal Pho­tos hide Data !

What are basic ways to start “Keep­ing Pace” with dig­i­tal privacy?

The pur­pose of this entry wasn’t to scare — rather inform.    As tech­nol­ogy does pro­vide value it is impor­tant to become aware of the pos­si­ble pri­vacy issues and act accord­ingly.    For the time being dig­i­tal pri­vacy is not some­thing you can “set and forget”

To “Keep Pace” remem­ber pro­tect­ing your dig­i­tal pri­vacy is ongo­ing and some­thing you shouldn’t neglect.   Some basic ques­tions to keep ask­ing your­self when you use any tech­nol­ogy include:

• Knowl­edge — Under­stand what the ser­vice is and the types infor­ma­tion it is giv­ing out
• Scope — Con­sider who is going to have access to your data
• Con­tent — “Think twice, pub­lish once” — Under­stand the infor­ma­tion you are about to give up
• Set­tings — Under­stand using any ser­vice get famil­iar with any pri­vacy set­tings you can turn on / off.

NOTE:  If you are inter­ested in turn­ing off Geo­t­ag­ging — read this arti­cle  Turn­ing off Geotagging

To “Keep Pace” with future technologies

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