How internet advertisers read your mind
The data we generate online has spawned a complex new ecosystem of firms tracking, interpreting and selling our data to advertisers. This raises privacy concerns for consumers.
Keep your cookies to yourself
Leaving a net cafe and your browsing history behind?
What is a digital shadow
Explore and minimise your ‘digital shadows’: the information traces you leave behind when you use the internet and mobile phones.
Discrimination drives the need for ethics in big data
Big data and analytics are profoundly affecting the world around us. One of the focal points of my postings has been how big data and analytics affects, specifically, our personal privacy. An old and perhaps far too familiar twist on this has risen to the forefront of discussion and that is the issue of whether big data and analytics will be used to discriminate against the less fortunate (or perhaps even “the one percent”).
Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters
Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see — and write about — the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States’ extensive surveillance of private citizens. In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why you need to care about privacy, even if you’re “not doing anything you need to hide.”
Not on a Social Network? You’ve Still Got a Privacy Problem
We already know that if you use an online social network, you give up a serious slice of your privacy thanks to the omnivorous way companies like Google and Facebook gather your personal data. But new academic research offers a glimpse of what these companies may be learning about people who don’t use their massive web services. And it’s a bit scary.
Civil Rights, Big Data, and Our Algorithmic Future
The key decisions that shape people’s lives—decisions about jobs, healthcare, housing, education, criminal justice and other key areas—are, more and more often, being made automatically by computers. As a result, a growing number of important conversations about civil rights, which focus on how these decisions are made, are also becoming discussions about how computer systems work.
Earlier this year, a path-breaking coalition of major civil rights and media justice organizations released the Civil Rights Principles for the Era of Big Data, highlighting how the growing use of digital surveillance, predictive analytics, and automated decision-making impacts core civil rights concerns. We served as technical advisors to that coalition.
A Guardian guide to metadata
Metadata is information generated as you use technology, and its use has been the subject of controversy since NSA’s secret surveillance program was revealed. Examples include the date and time you called somebody or the location from which you last accessed your email. The data collected generally does not contain personal or content-specific details, but rather transactional information about the user, the device and activities taking place. In some cases you can limit the information that is collected – by turning off location services on your cell phone for instance – but many times you cannot. Below, explore some of the data collected through activities you do every day
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