Privacy
Why is privacy important? What can computer users do to protect their
privacy?
The collecting of personal data is used for harassment, for
discrimination against people who have done nothing illegal, and for
applying generalisations and prejudice to people by association.
- Why is privacy important?
- Who's monitoring you?
- Protect your privacy when using your computer
- Arguments against ID cards
- Arguments against national citizen databases
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Why is privacy important?
You should be able to keep some things private, if you want:
- Finances
- Medical conditions, medical history
- Problems
- Job searches that your employer shouldn't know about
- Social life
- Sex life
- Address and contact details
- Things you own
- Info about members of your family
- Mistakes you made in the past
Companies that invade people's privacy also use the gathered information to
manipulate children
through profiling
for advertisers.
Google
publishes contacts / friend lists of all their members - Richard
Stallman comments: "This could mean imprisonment for dissidents that
use gmail. Maintaining your list of contacts on Google's server put you at
risk, because Google decides what to do with it. Even without any malice
it can hurt you badly."
Debunking The Dangerous "If You Have Nothing To Hide, You Have Nothing To Fear"
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Who's monitoring you?
-
Without you knowing it, through cookies in their syndicated ads: Google and
double-click.
-
If you use Microsoft Windows, it's sending a lot of personal info about you
to Microsoft.
-
If you use Apple's iTunes, same.
-
RealPlayer. This is actually why I first got interested
in free software - a flickering light on my
external modem in 1998 let me know that RealPlayer was sending data to
somewhere over the Internet, even when I was watching a video/song that was
on my computer.
-
If you own a Palm Pre, it turns out that mobile device has
been sending
your location regularly to Palm!
-
School
used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
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Protect your privacy when using your computer
- Use
free software ("free" as in
freedom) - free software can be audited, modified, and redistributed by
everyone. This means that if users don't like a feature, it can be removed
or changed. In practice, companies generally don't put data-gathering code
into free software - if they did, their users could simply get that same
software from another distributor who doesn't add that data-gathering code.
-
Telling live.com to stop tracking
you: link
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Choosing a web browser
If you use Firefox or a derivative such
as IceCat or IceWeasel,
consider installing
the CustomizeGoogle plugin and
maybe the
AdBlock Plus
plugin. Derived browsers are more likely to have privacy features
added, since Mozilla has a large financial agreement with data-collector
Google. (AdBlock Plus probably isn't going to
be added
to Firefox)
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Arguments against ID cards/numbers
-
National ID cards require governments to
have databases (actually, it's not a fundamental
requirement, but every government with a national ID requirement has done
it).
-
Identity theft becomes much easier because when someone steals your wallet,
they have your ID card. I see frequent problems in Belgium where fraudsters
use the number of other people's ID carts to defraud that person. In August
2008, someone successfully took out a load of €40,000 from a Belgian lending
society using a stolen ID card.
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Arguments against national citizen databases
Data theft and data loss are common. The more data about you that is held
by governments and corporations, the more problems they create without you
having any control.
Open Rights Group has a good list of examples from the
UK: UK
Privacy Debacles.
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Unsorted links
This is where I dump interesting links that I don't have time to integrate
into the body of this page. When I find time, I'll move them to the right
place and improve the titles and descriptions to highlight what's important
about each.
(Go: homepage of
Ciarán O'Riordan)
© Copyright 2009 Ciarán O'Riordan. Verbatim copying and
distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided
this notice is preserved. Distribution of modified versions of all or part
of this article are permitted, provided that such works carry three things:
(1) this copyright notice, (2) prominent notices stating the that it has
been changed, and (3) information for how to obtain the original (such as a
URL).
