Tag Archives: privacy

Transparency is Better than Hiding

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been using FaceBook for a couple of years.  I like that it allows me to keep in touch with my various social circles whether that is family or geocachers or other folks I’ve met throughout the years.  What I don’t like is people that aren’t sure they want to be on FaceBook so they create a profile with a fake name.   I don’t want to be friends with your imaginary self, I want to be online friends with the people I know in real-life.

I don’t know why people use fake names either on FaceBook or online in general.  Anonymity is not a good social construct.   It never has been.   Drivers are rude because you don’t know them.  I bet you’ve never had someone you know cut you off.  People typically become less civil when they can hide behind an pseudonym.   Flame wars in online forums tend to happen because the combatants can hide behind anonymity.   Remove the anonymity and things get much more civil, even between rivals.

I am currently reading Jaron Lanier‘s You Are Not a Gadget.   I’m finding the book a little hard to read but I do agree with one of the tenants of his manifesto.   In the book Lanier makes the case that you should own your online identity.  He believes as I do that what you say on line should reflect what you say in person and for that to work you can’t be anonymous.   Couple this with another book I’m reading (okay listening to, multi-media for multi-purpose I suppose) Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom, by Matthew Fraser and you can see why I’m taking this position.

In Throwing Sheep the author cites a number of examples where people have not realized that the Internet has infinite memory.  What you say online never goes away.  That isn’t always a bad thing.   If you have a vivid enough online reputation it becomes incredibly difficult for someone to impersonate you online.  If you haven’t secured your name on sites like FaceBook or LinkedIn or elsewhere then someone else can.  There are a couple of famous John Robb‘s out there.  They secured their identities which means I need to assert mine to avoid confusion.  There are even companies that will manage the creation of your online profile.

Transparency is the key to ensuring you control your online identity.  If you hide behind a pseudonym someone can come along and pretend to be you using your real name.  Protect yourself, be yourself.

School Caught Spying on Student’s Webcam

Posted on by
1

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about Google Latitude which generated some impassioned responses.   The gist of the comments was that Latitude was very Big Brotherish. Well kids you ain’t seen nothing yet.   Last year the Lower Merion School District moved into the 21st century and provided laptops to their students.  So far so good.  On the Apple laptops are webcams that can be remotely monitored.  Not just can be but were allegedly used to spy on a student at home.

I came across this story via the Location Meme blog post entitled The Aliens of Lower Merion County.  Location Meme sourced an article that discusses a class action lawsuit filed by a student who was reportedly reprimanded for “improper behaviour at home“.  Isn’t that his parent’s job?  How did the school find out about this?  They took a picture of the improper behaviour via the school’s computer and showed it to the student.  The school district has since shut off this feature.  Here is a link to the school district’s announcement.

About 8 years ago I worked on a project for the Ojo Video Phone.   You sometimes see the characters on NCSI using this phone.  When I first met with the folks that made the phone they gave me a little demonstration of the phone.  I noticed that the phone had this decidedly low tech feature – a door over the camera.  I asked why low-tech was used instead of say and LED. It turns out that users were generally freaked out by the idea that a camera could be spying on them.  I guess they were right!  I wonder if you took a survey how many people would report that they stick something over their computer’s built in camera?