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Category Archives: data security

Companies competing to protect our privacy?

12-Apr-13

It’d be an exaggeration to say that tech companies are falling over themselves to protect our privacy, but you might say that it’s becoming a “social norm” for US businesses. At least, that’s what the New York Times reports, and that must be at least a sign that it’s true because it’s far from normative [...]

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Why we do ‘let our guard down’: Online privacy

02-Apr-13

We care about our online privacy, but we also like convenience a whole lot. And not only convenience, but often a good deal or discount beats out any worry about data security. What do deals and convenience have to do with privacy? A whole lot. An article by Somini Sengupta at the New York Times [...]

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PS4, gaming & the new privacy reality

11-Mar-13

One thing we all need to teach our kids now is that the privacy spectrum we really need to be aware of isn’t so much private-to-public as private-to-convenient – or, from kids’ perspective, private-to-social (or just to-spontaneous-&-fun). The more convenience we want (e.g., not bothering with password-protecting our phones or giving services all kinds of [...]

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FTC finds kid apps’ privacy practices ‘disAPPointing’

17-Feb-12

The US Federal Trade Commission has turned this week’s wakeup call about mobile-app privacy into a conference call, adding kids’ privacy to the conversation. The title of its just-released report “Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures are Disappointing” (that’s the FTC authors’ cute italicization) summarizes the Commission’s conclusions well. But to make their point [...]

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NEW! The 2012 edition of ‘A Parents’ Guide to Facebook’

02-Feb-12

I am pleased to announce that we at ConnectSafely.org have just released the 2012 edition of our Parents’ Guide to Facebook. It’s already being translated into Arabic and Spanish. Since Release 1.0 of the Guide a little over a year ago (this one is a full 2.0), Facebook has made a lot of changes – [...]

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Google’s data-security ed campaign & site

18-Jan-12

This week Google launched an ad campaign and Web site headlined “Good To Know,” according to a report at the Washington Post. Aimed at teaching Net users the basics of protecting their data in our increasingly social media environment, the campaign has ads appearing in “dozens of U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, USA [...]

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US’s huge new ‘Stop. Think. Connect’ campaign

05-Oct-10

A broad coalition of federal agencies, corporations, and cybersecurity advocates wants it to be reflexive for Americans to “Stop. Think. Connect.”

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Data privacy: Be extra alert these days

29-Jan-09

This is timely news, since yesterday the United States, Canada, and 27 European celebrated the third-annual Data Protection Day (see Computer Weekly). Computer security experts are saying that cybercriminals are taking advantage of “the fear and confusion created by tumbling financial markets” with a “massive wave of schemes to steal people’s personal data,” USATODAY reports. [...]

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Britain’s ‘child protection database’

28-Jan-09

This is what some in the UK call “child protection”? The BBC reports that “a child protection database” containing “the name, address, parents’ contact details, date of birth, school, and doctor of every child in England” is being established “to improve information-sharing between professionals working with children.” It will be accessible to 390,000 people described [...]

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Data breaches way up

09-Jan-09

Whether or not age verification would help keep kids safe online, as state attorneys general suggest, it would require the collection of children’s personal information into some database(s) somewhere. Consider that possibility against the news of where we are with the security of personal information in databases right now. “Businesses, governments and educational institutions reported [...]

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