Privacy

Data mining systems like Google Analytics (used by some of our sites) that collect and analyze vast amounts of user data raise privacy concerns that need to be carefully considered when building community and social networking sites. As societal interactions rely on trust or reputation, it's important that this trust can be accumulated and even measured in a safe and secure way.

The degree to which privacy is protected on the web is determined not only by the policies and practices of a particular site. In a web application, it also depends on the software the site is built on. Drupal excels at enabling individuals to share information. How strong is Drupal's corresponding support for protecting personal information and privacy? To answer this question, we'll look at display of private information, IP address logging, cookie use, and users' control over their own data.

Google has announced their web browser Chrome. Many are excited while others remain skeptical. Currently I'm both; but a recent discovery has swayed me towards skeptical. Here's why.

Google is announcing Friend Connect tonight, a service advertised to "help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors." Friend Connect employs OpenID and oAuth which is a good start, but how it puts them together is lacking vision and, disturbingly, may raise significant privacy concerns.

Planning on a movie tonight... Bought tickets on Fandango... On the PRINT screen, a pop-up: "...added to your Facebook" "what?!" I log onto Facebook and see woah.

OpenID is a decentralized, secure single sign-on system. It allows you to create a login at a site you frequent, and use that same login on any other site that supports OpenID. Listen to TWIT's program on Open ID, how it works and what it means to you (not having to remember so many passwords for starters).

Listening to Market Place last night, I heard a story about online privacy, and privacy in general. Seems that Privacy International issued a report recently that marks Google as the worst internet company when it comes to privacy. Stop the presses!

From Wired Blog - May 14th is the official deadline for cable modem companies, DSL providers, broadband over powerline, satellite internet companies and some universities to finish wiring up their networks with FBI-friendly surveillance gear, to comply with the FCC's expanded interpretation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

I just stumbled upon (not with suble upon though) this Scary blog post about google data mining your voice:

At CivicActions we know all about open WiFi networks, and I often get asked by friends about "internet security" and specifically, how secure their activities are when they are on open networks. David Pogue covered the issue in his column today. While he believes his wifi traffic is not worth snooping ("Frankly, I consider the details of my life so boring to other people that I really couldn’t care less. I’ve got nothing to hide, so why not accept it?") he disabused his readers of any notion that their WiFi traffic was generally safe from snooping eyes.