Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/26/18

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Online Privacy

The hits just keep on coming with regard to how companies, often without our knowledge,are collecting personal information about our activities on the Web. Since government at present seems uninterested in helping us to protect out privacy, it is up to us as individuals to do what we can to at least partially exert control over what we do while on the web. Here are some other ways we can try to do that.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/19/18

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

The media show surrounding Congress people questioning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s privacy policies is blessedly over but the problem of what we can do as individuals to protect our personal information online goes on. Here are a few more ideas.

Here is a link to an article that may offer users of Facebook and Google a bit of a surprise: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/personaltech/i-downloaded-the-information-that-facebook-has-on-me-yikes.html

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/12/18

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Is there any way we can preserve some personal privacy online in our digital world?

Facebook has been much in the news lately since Cambridge Analytica scraped data on 87 million American Facebook users and used that information to try to influence voters in the last national election. But, of course, using people’s personal information to profile them is nothing new – it goes on all the time for all sorts of purposes. That’s the bargain we users make. We use free online services like Facebook, and those services sell our information to others who will pay for it. Is there any way we can preserve some personal privacy online in our digital world? Here is a first suggestion.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 5/5/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

May 1-7 is Choose Privacy Week. Should it matter to you? Give a listen and see what you think.

Items mentioned in the program:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/post-fcc-privacy-rules-should-you-vpn/
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trackmenot/cgllkjmdafllcidaehjejjhpfkmanmka

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/27/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Congress recently rescinded FCC regulations that would protect our web browsing and other information gathered by Internet Service Providers from being sold or otherwise used without our permission. In this new situation of no oversight of ISPs by any federal agencies, what can we individuals do to help protect our personal privacy online? Here’s a start.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/6/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

So there is now no privacy regulations regarding what Internet Service Providers can do with our browsing and other personal information. How did we get in this situation, and what does it mean for our choices as consumers who use the Internet. Here’s the story.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/30/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Recently, we’ve seen headlines like “US Congress Votes to Let Broadband ISPs Sell Your Browser Histories.” Could this be true? Yup, it sure is so it becomes more important than ever for anyone who cares about personal privacy to take steps to preserve their privacy online themselves. In theory, most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have agreed to abide by a set of ISP Privacy Principles. A copy of those principles is available here: https://prodnet.www.neca.org/publicationsdocs/wwpdf/12717ctia.pdf. And most ISPs are supposed to provide a way for customers to choose not to have their personal information sold to others. Each ISP is supposed to have a way to opt out of tracking of their Internet activity. The link for Time Warner Cable, now Spectrum, is here: https://pc2.mypreferences.com/charter/privacy.