26.4.2008 von admin.

The International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications, the so-called Berlin Group, has released a report and guidance on privacy in social network services. After listing some of the major risks to the information privacy of social network users, the report draws up some preliminary guidance for privacy and data protection regulators, for social network application providers and also for users. The Rome Memorandum is available for free.

Geschrieben in Law & Technology, Social Networks, Privacy | 1 Kommentar »

26.2.2008 von admin.

This fairly tale is about a girl called Little Red Surfing Hood. The girl one day is surfing through the Internet and through some of her social network profiles. She actually plans to visit her grandmother later that day. All of a sudden, a message pops up on her screen from a user with the profile name “wolf”. He plans to discover as much about the girl and her grandmother as possible and pretends to be a very cute boy going to the same school as Little Red Surfing Hood. He asks all kinds of questions, sends her a link request and asks for a picture of her. She naïvely links him to her profile and also sends him a picture. Little Red Surfing Hood is really happy to have made a new friend. In the meantime, wolf assembles various credentials about Little Red Surfing Hood making use of details revealed on her profile, pictures, and personal details such as her address, Email, a mobile phone number and the route she always takes to go to her grandmother. With those credentials, he goes to the girl’s grandmother’s house, gains entry by pretending to be the girl. The rest of the fairy tale is known. The wolf eats the grandmother and later on the girl as well. There are different story endings how the girl and her grandmother were rescued by a hunter. But that is not the point of the story here. We don’t even know who the hunter was, how he found out about the wolf in the grandmother’s house and for what purpose he was into this.

Information privacy in social network applications means more than allowing certain people to see your profile. First, it means to have a way to really know the true identity of the person talking or connecting to you. Secondly, it means to have full transparency over what you and what others are doing. What happens if you upload a certain piece of data to your social network profile? Who can see which part of your profile data, who is connected to it and who uses your data for which purpose? This, of course, includes the service providers and any third parties (including the hunter). And finally, it means to determine for yourself, how your personal data is linked, exported, assembled and analyzed in which context and by whom.

Geschrieben in Social Networks, Privacy | Keine Kommentare »

29.1.2008 von admin.

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

An interesting and well-done video on the data portability project done by Michael Pick from Smashcut Media. The project spells out as one of its principles the protection of user rights and privacy. Yet, assigning access rights to certain pieces of personal data will only cover the data protection aspect of privacy but it will not cover the required accountability and self-control over personal data in various contexts. It should be interesting to see how the project work evolves in this respect. Certainly, more work is necessary on enhancing social network users’ privacy especially when their data increasingly gets transferred and exported to other applications.

Geschrieben in Social Networks, Web 2.0, Privacy | Keine Kommentare »

28.1.2008 von admin.

It might of interest to some folks working on information privacy in social network applications that the W3C has started an interest group called PLING (Policy Languages Interest Group). It is an open forum to discuss use cases, languages, and frameworks around information governance policies and serves as a global platform to enable different initiatives to share and exchange ideas about policy interoperability. Part of my PhD work is setting requirements and mechanisms to talk “privacy” to computers. Not an easy task. As we know, for computers the Web is flat. Privacy, however, has many dimensions and depends on various contexts. Therefore, I thought it might be a good idea to join PLING and see how I can contribute with some use cases related to privacy in social network applications. If you are interested in joining the group, please go to http://www.w3.org/Policy/pling/ and join the public mailing list.

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21.1.2008 von admin.

I am currently working on a paper for the PET Symposium trying to build a privacy threat model for social networking applications. The Webb/Butterfield/Smith Model for Social Software seems to be an appropriate way to visualize the main functional elements of social networking apps. Let’s see how this model can be extended to information privacy and the personal data being collected and processed in social networking applications…

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22.12.2007 von admin.

Recommended lessons to privacy-respecting design of social software by Kosmar.

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19.12.2007 von admin.

Geschrieben in Law & Technology, Privacy | Keine Kommentare »

23.11.2007 von admin.

When you buy a book or movie online–or make a political contribution–do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?

Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But this week, Facebook began doing just that. People across the country saw private purchases they made on other sites displayed on their Facebook News Feeds.

Facebook encourages companies to get “word-of-mouth promotion for your business” to “millions” by using the feature that makes this happen. But left behind are the rights of Facebook users.

Let’s get Facebook to stop invading our privacy. Sign the petition at

http://civ.moveon.org/facebookprivacy/?r_by=-8696858-Ebg7DE&rc=confemail

Then join the Facebook group “Facebook, stop invading my privacy!” and tell your friends.

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3181

Thanks!

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23.11.2007 von admin.

What do you need to be able to complete your PhD? My professor at Goethe University, Prof. Dr. Kai Rannenberg, has posted his “7 Ps of Doing a PhD” yesterday at the Chair’s Offsite in Fulda. There are the following:
Phantasy
Persistence
Patience
Perspiration
Passion
Personality
Political Support

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23.11.2007 von admin.

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