Opting-out of surveillance capitalism?

Twitter investors may get access to user data

I'm surprised but not surprised that Musk's dealings to get investors in his effort to take Twitter private may include sharing of personal data about users. This article makes it sound almost normal that this kind of information-sharing happens with investors (inclusion of the phrase "information beyond what lower-level investors can receive").

Meta's receipt of tax information via tracking pixels on tax preparer websites is the subject of a federal lawsuit. The tax preparing sites are not participants in the lawsuit (yet?).

the age of borderless data is ending. What we're seeing is a move to digital sovereignty

Tracking that evades address changes

An operating system can change the hardware address it broadcasts in avoid tracking. But subtle differences in the signal itself can still be identified and tracked.

"I Have Nothing To Hide" counter-argument

Even if you have nothing to hide, that doesn't mean that those you are connected with aren't also being surveilled and are part of targeted communities.

Dorothea Salo (2021) Physical-Equivalent Privacy, The Serials Librarian, DOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2021.1875962

Permanent Link: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/81297

Abstract

This article introduces and applies the concept of “physical-equivalent privacy” to evaluate the appropriateness of data collection about library patrons’ use of library-provided e‑resources. It posits that as a matter of service equity, any data collection practice that causes e‑resource users to enjoy less information privacy than users of an information-equivalent print resource is to be avoided. Analysis is grounded in real-world e‑resource-related phenomena: secure (HTTPS) library websites and catalogs, the Adobe Digital Editions data-leak incident of 2014, and use of web trackers on e‑resource websites. Implications of physical-equivalent privacy for the SeamlessAccess single-sign-on proposal will be discussed.

Why use a disappearing message service

The point of a disappearing message service is to have the parties to the message agree on the data-retention provisions of a message. The service automates that agreement by deleting the message at the specified time. The point isn't to send a message to an adversary and then delete it so they can't prove that it has been sent. There are too many ways of capturing the contents of a message—as simple as taking a picture of the message with another device.

There is an odd sort of self-selected information bubble here. DuckDuckGo promoted itself as privacy-aware, not unfiltered. On their Sources page, they talk about where they get content and how they don't sacrifice privacy to gather search results. Demoting disinformation sources in their algorithms would seem to be a good thing. Except if what you expect to see is disinformation, and then suddenly the search results don't match your expectations.

I'm enough of a tinfoil hat wearer to this this might be true. Especially since my google home talks to me entirely too much when I'm not talking to it.

Chen, W., & Zou, Y. (2021). Why Zoom Is Not Doomed Yet: Privacy and Security Crisis Response in the COVID-19 Pandemic. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/mf935

Wang, C. J. (2021). Contact-tracing app curbed the spread of COVID in England and Wales. Nature, d41586-021-01354–01358. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01354-8

Lovato, J., Allard, A., Harp, R., & Hébert-Dufresne, L. (2020). Distributed consent and its impact on privacy and observability in social networks. ArXiv:2006.16140 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2006.16140

Bauch, C. T., & Anand, M. (2020). COVID-19: When should quarantine be enforced? The Lancet Infectious Diseases, S147330992030428X. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30428-X

Nanni, M., Andrienko, G., Boldrini, C., Bonchi, F., Cattuto, C., Chiaromonte, F., Comandé, G., Conti, M., Coté, M., Dignum, F., Dignum, V., Domingo-Ferrer, J., Giannotti, F., Guidotti, R., Helbing, D., Kertesz, J., Lehmann, S., Lepri, B., Lukowicz, P., … Vespignani, A. (2020). Give more data, awareness and control to individual citizens, and they will help COVID-19 containment. ArXiv:2004.05222 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.05222

What can we build that would allow people to 1.) annotate terms of service related to tools they adopt in a classroom? and 2.) see an aggregated list of all current annotations. Last, if we were to start critically analyzing EdTech Terms of Service, what questions should we even ask?