Image Credits: Becky Morris CC: BY
What's this all about?
Thanks for stopping by! Some people may know that privacy both analogue and digital is super close to my heart. I am a co-learner and I have found myself shoulders deep in this stuff because I find myself asking more questions than having real answers. #privacyUG is my way of trying to figure out the answers: some of you here are completely new to this and others less so, this is a space to ask questions. To those of you I have invited that are a little more clued up, please help us learn faster and share your insights.
Thursday 12th May 18:00 BST Introduction to Privacy and Security
Wednesday 18th May 18:00 BST Metadata, information about information
Thursday 26th May 18:00 BST Making sense of Big Data
Where are you guys?
I plan on running this class at secret locations with a group of other privacy newbies to help us understand more about the digital economy so we can have informed discussions around our right to privacy in the information age.
If you think you are local to me and want in on the location, please drop me a tweet and we can connect securely. It's all a little underground, which makes it super fun. If you're not in my area, fear not, it's open and online for a reason, please join us remotely!
How you join the class
This is ironically an open class. I will be posting a video that we will all watch at the arranged time (see above) and then we will all watch it together and tweet our notes throughout with the hashtag #privacyUG. This is going to be kind of intense, so make sure you have a cookie afterwards (pun-intended)
Tweeting our notes means that we can collectively make a meta-notepad, publicly raising our thoughts on privacy in the digital age.
There will be follow on things to look at and play with and I welcome you to blog a reflective piece from each session. This doesn't have to be much, but I'd love to hear your more formed thoughts.
How can I remain anonymous in the class?
I hope that by the end of the three sessions that we all start to rethink whether we can be truly anonymous online. However, you can make a pseudonymous twitter account and use the TOR browser (if you have a strong internet connection) or use a VPN.
I have included some useful tools on this page to help you protect your privacy, I hope this helps!
Let's get this show on the road:
- Plug in your headphones
- Watch the video and tweet your notes throughout with #privacyUG @schneierblog
- You can pause the video!
- Any woes about using Twitter, check out the #CClasses guidelines
Underground After Hours
Swot up
Here is a few things worth having a look at for next time:
2 Location Apps can Reveal your Identity
Oversharing and Privacy, a Public Concern
Let's Go Exploring
Take this Lollipop displays a haunting truth of how transparent your Facebook profile is, depending on your privacy settings
Let's go exploring
This interactive episode in the interactive documentary series Do Not Track details what data your smart-phone is harvesting.
Do Not Track Documentary (Episode 4)
Reflect and Share
I invite you to share your consolidated thoughts around session one and share with the #privacyUG community, just ping a link with the hashtag on Twitter!
- Plug in your headphones
- Watch the video and tweet your notes throughout with #privacyUG #CClasses
- Please take a look at the hashtags and contribute to the discussion.
- Daniel: @dsmilkov Deepak: @dj247
- You can pause the video!
- Any woes about using Twitter, check out the #CClasses guidelines
Underground After Hours
Let's Go Exploring
Immersion is the tool that Deepak and Daniel developed at MIT and talk about. Check out your email's metadata!
Let's Go Exploring
'You are Where you Go' uses Social Media APIs to show you what your location potentially reveals about you.
Check this out
This visualisation displays a Swiss Councilor's metadata haemorrhaged from his phone (location, mail, calls)
The monitored life of Balthasar Glättli
Check this out
MyShadow.org provides super easy to understand overview of your digital shadow
myshadow.org/location-tracking
Who is interested in you?
This plug-in for Firefox visualises third party trackers on websites potentially taking your metadata
- Plug in your headphones
- Watch the video and tweet your notes throughout with #privacyUG #CClasses @katecrawford
- Please take a look at the hashtags and contribute to the discussion.
- You can pause the video!
- Any woes about using Twitter, check out the #CClasses guidelines
Let's Go Exploring
Discover your psycho-demographic profile based on your Facebook Likes, developed by Cambridge University
Let's Go Exploring
Check out what your recent tweets say about you. At least according to this sentiment analysis algorithm
Check this out
Algorithms that interpret Big Data have to be coded by somebody and that can lead to discrimination...
And that's a wrap!
Thank you for joining the class, please continue to share interesting reads on Twitter using #PrivacyUG and just ping me a message if you want to host your very own underground class.
Privacy Open-Class. Oxymoron?
This isn't a trick. #privacyUG is an open class that has been developed with the #CClasses framework developed by Jonathan Worth.
You may say that this isn't a class, but a bunch of resources gathered together. And you would be right, but this 'class' is about learning and questioning together. When we come together on mass online, we can create much more noise and draw others into the conversation.
By publicly tweeting our notes with a hashtag, our notes and community will be tied together. This does also mean that this class will stamp itself in your digital identity, but my hope is that this experience will help you make more informed decisions around your privacy moving forwards. If you get as excited as me about finding readings, videos, books etc, let's keep the thread alive and remember to tweet to the network.
Again, you may of course use a pseudonym if you do not feel comfortable publicly speaking in the class. 🙂
Privacy Tools
This is not a fully formed list, but here are my suggestions (right now) about how to better improve your privacy.
- Block Trackers (as best you can - I use more than one)
- Use a VPN Virtual Private Networks to mask your IP address, this won't make you anonymous, but will prevent such things like price discrimination.
- Change your search engine to one that doesn't track you. Your search history can be super intimate! Non-tracking engines take a little getting used to, but
- Try an Internet browser that respects your privacy
- Instant message with End-to-end Encrypted Messenger, send letters, not postcards to your friends.
- Use Masked Email addresses, they forward to your email but it makes it more tricky to correlate your online behaviours based on your email.
- Lie a little more: when you want to log-in to public wifi, any name and email address will do!
- Turn off your location settings on your smart phone if they don't really make a difference to your experience.
TAGS Explorer Twitter Visualisation of #PrivacyUG
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