My Digital FootPrint

Is Anything Private on Your Phone Anymore? is a blog/ article from Lookout "Outlook decided to look at the range of personal information on your phone, explain the top privacy concerns and give simple steps you can take to put your mind at ease."  Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt sell - especially if you are selling security.  

  This is driven by a thought - is there a flaw in personalisation? Most TV service providers now recognise that there is a need to incorporate recommendation as part of their content discovery mix - according to TV Genius . Depending on the provider, this can be a matter of personalising the video-on-demand store, promoting premium TV channels, or driving viewers to video-on-demand services from within the traditional EPG. All of these solutions have appeal to different demographic groups, but recent research they have conducted shows that a much broader content discovery solution is required.  After all, not every user has the same exact content discovery needs; while some viewers know exactly what they want, others are simply browsing for something new to watch.   So segmentation could look like ..... with each group having very different content discovery behaviours. 1. Socialites: Influenced by friends and family, channel surfing, and web and mobile 2. Progressives:...

On a serious note and following the identity phrase "how do you know I am not a dog" - we assume that what we read on a screen is real (well more real than a news headline) but there are people out there who are trying to deceive you. Worth checking out what Andriod and iPhone applications there are for fake location.

Practical Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding in colloboration with IW (www.theIW.org) Engaging Citizens or Customers with Web2.0 and Social Media Interested in learning what all the hype is about? Curious as to what it takes to use crowdsourcing as part of your innovation strategy/ How do I get started with crowdfunding to fund change or startups? Join us for this interactive workshop which will cover  the following topics: Social media and its impact on product development, marketing and communications. Practical Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding - what are they and how can you use them? How to tap into the conversations that are already going on to make better decisions? Making crowdsourcing pay for itself - the business case. What are the restrictions around crowdfunding things like bands, businesses, charities, etc.? Best practices and how to implement in your organization. How to overcome some of the negatives. How social media fits into the ...

Image from the BBC An article written by Daniel Solve http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/ is about Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' to which he asks questions such as  "So do you have curtains?"  or  "Can I see your credit-card bills for the last year?" His response to the "If you have nothing to hide ... " argument is simply, "I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant." I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either. If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life. Show me yours and I'll show you mine. It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business. The long article is worth a read and you quickly see that Andrew is on a different side of the coin to say Jeff Jarvis - worth listening to their BBC inte...

    For the past year Simon and I have been growing, under the banner of   mashup* ,   Ignite  in partnership with  Avanta .  The vision was to provide a space where early stage, high growth, companies can start, grow, meet and collaborate - accelerating the rate of their innovation and connecting with critical delivery and implementation skills.  So far fruit includes  InDigital ,  Start-up Intelligence ,  Bluefield  and  OOsocial . Whilst doing this I have also been part of the founding team to start-up a much bigger open collaborate/ co-creation space called  IW  (working with the  City of London Corporation ) and we opened the doors today! There is now 10,000 sq foot of digital incubation space in the  Smithfield .   IW is a shared, semi-open plan office space designed for growing companies in a vibrant atmosphere. We aim to attract dynamic young businesses who want to grow fast.  IW ...

Image from Life Hacker which also has a good blog on the topic of Do Not Track Edward Markey (D-Mass) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) have released  a discussion draft   “ Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 (for the USA)." Views based on a very quick read of a bill which is intended to help safeguard kids’ privacy online, has provisions of wider interest: (1) New regulations aimed at limiting data collection about children and teens, including           (a)  expansion of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 , which would build upon COPPA’s “verifiable parental consent” model; and           (b) a new “ Digital Marketing Bill of Rights for Teens ;” and           (c)  limits on collection of geolocation information  about both children and teens. (2)...

Disclosure Statement Digital ethics are adding a layer of complication to our forgetful, slow, media, telecoms, print and broadcast laws, rules, rights and regulations.  It is clear that as this blog passes 500,000 "hits" that the division between enthusiast, critic, and being able to express views with integrity is getting harder; indeed I have learnt that true reporting is a complex and a lot of work so I leave it to the experts.  Whilst journalists have ethical guidelines, the rest of us just become publishers as we have free access to the platforms. One principle that is valuable for almost everyone is disclosure and to declare any conflicts of interest.  So in that spirit, here is my first disclosure statement:- This blog is a follow on to my book - "My Digital Footprint", which is sold by Amazon ( physical and Kindle ) and FutureText ( the publisher) or free in PDF form if you want it via the website ; This blog is not sponsored; The ...

Via Olswang The Information Commissioner's Office has published guidance to give businesses a "starting point for compliance" with new rules requiring opt-in consent to the use of cookies. The new UK legislation comes into force on 26 May. The Government continues to work with browser manufacturers on a browser-based solution, but the ICO stresses that businesses do need to take compliance steps now, not simply wait and see. The new rules and ICO guidance: what three steps should businesses take now? The background to these changes will now be familiar to many of our readers - but for a quick recap please see our April 2011 update here . In short, the obligation on websites using cookies is being "upped" from a requirement for clear and comprehensive information about cookie use (and the opportunity to refuse cookies) to a requirement for opt-in consent. The new rules are set out in Regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) ...

You can also get involved at the Drumbeat  Privacy Icons project page . A good blog on the proposed Icons is here at Aza Raskin blog   http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/privacy-icons/ Thoughts, comments, suggestions, and alternate constructive proposals are welcome. This is an alpha proposal for highlighting the parts of a site’s privacy policy you, as a user, should care about. For a more detailed set of thoughts on how these icons can be made enforceable, please read his original  original blog post . See the full gallery on Posterous

From MDG Advertising

meet Alessandro Acquisti - he is an Associate Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the  Heinz College  at  Carnegie Mellon University . He is also a member of the  CMU Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory , a member of  CMU Privacy Technology Center , a member of CMU Cylab , and co-director of the CMU Center for Behavioral Decision Research (CBDR). His blog and page provides links to resources on the economics of privacy, financial privacy, and the economics of anonymity: papers, people, related conferences, and other links. "Behind a privacy intrusion there is often an economic trade-off. The reduction of the cost of storing and manipulating information has led organizations to capture increasing amounts of data about individual behavior. The hunger for customization and usability has led individuals to reveal more about themselves to other parties. New trade-offs have emerged in which privacy, economics, and tec...

Another European Union privacy group has published a document with recommendations about location privacy the problem is that it will inform those who are influential in the EU but not really understanding the wider implications and unintended consequences. The paper is published by "Article 29 Data Protection Working Party", which is part of the justice division of the EU, and is formed by a representative in charge of data protection (privacy) in each EU member state. When the Article 29 group puts out an opinion, its recommendations can be followed by either individual EU states or the EU itself and they did set limits on how long search engines should be retaining their search data.  The recommendations aren’t law but they do appear to go far above and beyond what's been discussed so far in the U.S. just as Google,  Apple, Sony and Nintendo are being interrogated about their policies when it comes to user data its use and ownership. The key recommend...

Simplify360 has been exploring the relationship between the number of Facebook fans and engagement level to reveal that on an average, each new post generates 826 likes and 309 comments. The starting point was 50 Facebook fan pages with a random mix of brands from all over the world from consumer brands, to sports teams, to celebrities. What it tells us that there is some engagement but not a lot.  I would like to see the coloration of the noisy ones to see if it is many people or just a few. This also misses sentiment and they miss a lot by defining Liking Rate and Commenting Rate as the average ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ a post would generate if the number of fans for the page is normalized to one million. Only posts by the page admin are considered for the study. Overall – it says that the content was not written to generate comment, engagement, conversation or relationship….

Worth a read   http://content.yudu.com/A1s37z/IndexQ12011/resources/index.htm

Worth a read   http://content.yudu.com/A1s37z/IndexQ12011/resources/index.htm

Worth a read   http://content.yudu.com/A1s37z/IndexQ12011/resources/index.htm

Worth a read   http://content.yudu.com/A1s37z/IndexQ12011/resources/index.htm

Worth a read   http://content.yudu.com/A1s37z/IndexQ12011/resources/index.htm

Check out a long list of works at  http://www.harpers.org/subjects/MrFish and here http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/category/mr_fish/  Mr. Fish ( mrfish@clowncrack.com ) lives in Los Angeles, California. He never asked to be born. Occasionally, he laughs his head off. His mother has no idea what he's up to. She cries easily. For more information, date him. Born a fish always a fish!

It has been widely reported that Disney has paid more than $3 million to make US regulators go away after it was revealed several sites once operated by its Playdom games division illegally collected and disclosed personal information from thousands of children.  Disney is probably not at fault since they bought Playdom last year and the abuses seem to have been committed prior to the $563 million (August  2010). According to the  LA Times , the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claimed that several Disney sites, including an online virtual world called Pony Stars, illegally collected and disclosed personal information. More than 821,000 children kiddies registered with Pony Stars from 2006 to 2010 and 403,000 children provided their information to some of the 19 other virtual worlds operated by Playdom, including 2 Moons, 9 Dragons and My Diva Doll. Playdom's sites harvested children's ages and email addresses during the registration process and allowed them to publicl...

An good article has been posted on BNET  titled "New Privacy Laws in India and China Could Make IT Outsourcing Ugly"  worth reading in full. Essentially the article by Eric Sherman points forward the issues that new privacy laws being proposed by India and China could make the task of outsourcing very mush more difficult. Specially there is a call from the US government for the following: Those that hold personal data must receive explicit consent to divulge that data to third parties. There are specific restrictions “during the collection, processing, use, transfer and maintenance of personal information.” Personal data cannot be exported unless specifically allowed by law or government authorities.    The implication is that we must be prepared for the real cost of protecting data  however are we in danger of paying to guard some data that is already public and some that has close to no other value. Whatever the case there ...

What name do you use to describe a generic collection of data? examples of specific Travel data = (name, address, passport, frequent flyer number, insurance, hotel, dates, destination, class, preferences) Shipping data = (name, shipping address, date, price, weight, priority, preferences) Billing data = (Unique ID, name, address, Bank, bank details, service/product, price, settlement) What is the link from the collection to your ontology?

Argument preview: How broad is the right to mine data? by Lyle Denniston The US Supreme Court held a one hour of oral argument on 26th April on the scope of constitutional protection for the modern phenomenon of “data-mining,” the creation of usable information out of masses of stored computer entries.  The case is  Sorrell, et al., v. IMS Health, et al.  (10-779 ).   Arguing for the state of Vermont, defending a law that limits the commercial use of such data, will be an assistant state attorney general, Bridget C. Asay of Montpelier.  Supporting such regulatory efforts, for the federal government, will be Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler, with ten minutes of time.  Speaking for data-mining companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers will be Thomas C. Goldstein of Goldstein, Howe & Russell in Washington, D.C.   Whilst it is an interesting question, the question should not be about the right to mine but the ri...

A Council of Europe members propose resolution on 'Improving user protection and security in cyberspace" "The Parliamentary Assembly is concerned that technological and commercial innovations in Internet and other digital information and communication media are taking place without an adequate analysis of the interests of the weakest part in this process: the user or consumer. For nearly a century, consumer protection principles have been established for traditional commerce of goods and services. However, they are more or less absent in modern cyberspace. Voluntary self-regulation by Internet stakeholders falls short of the legitimate expectations of protection. In their use of the Internet, people come into contact with a multitude of intermediaries and software applications of third parties without knowing. Users of mobile communication devices change their intermediaries while moving. The Internet of things, cloud computing, social networks, peer-to-peer network...

Last week I was at The Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) in San Jose organised by Doc Searls , Phil Windley and Kaliya Hamlin - it was very good with a diversity of representation based on geography and discipline; with start-up, government and a number of the big corporates represented all at very senior levels. Identity (whatever identity is) is a critical part of the overall trust framework of the Internet.  "I want to know you are not a dog" and featuring heavily in discussion and debate was..... 1. The U.S. government announcement of a new initiative called The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) . The new program brings together government, industry and advocacy groups in order to build out what they’re calling an ” Identity Ecosystem ” in the private sector. 2. Standards and interoperability especially OpenID & OAUTH implementations and improvements 3. Personal lockers, data stores, users in control and ...

(The meeting of the waters at the source of the Amazon!) This started life as a private letter to Nokia and Microsoft about what they could do to revolutionise the mobile industry as competing on UI, apps and shinny things are unlikely to bring about a massive share price hike.  With a few hours to spare on a flight to SFO I started but concluded that an open letter would be more fun as I modelled how Nokia & Microsoft could look to offer the operators a better deal by changing the economics and it looked to attractive to hide. Working assumption - All you can eat is a broken model..... When the mobile market was about voice and SMS there was a finite limit to how much you can talk and SMS and all you could eat worked based on some well presented statistical calculations.  But unlimited data, even with fair use is a problem when social media feeds and video create a perfect storm.   There are a few really limiting factors in the mobile world: battery life...

http://isharedwhat.com/simulator.html See what you are sharing when you log in via Facebook Connect  - simulator

look up what the web knows about you.....

Just meet The Locker Project at iiw  http://blog.lockerproject.org/# Takes your data and puts it in one place

This is a follow up to a discussion about Identity with my friend and fellow professional Nicky Hickman about our favourite topics of identity and where does value originate.  We were doing the rounds on the value of social media data, signals, pulses, waves and I got thinking about this slightly dated 2005 Mobile Web 2.0 diagram.  Ajit and I wrote about the changing nature of who was creating content and how there was a shift in the balance of power from professional to consumer, something the editor of our book did not agree at the time with but that is another story!    The chart shows how events accumulate different value depending on time and how it is consumed. Why go back and rethink.... One of the four value points was "new" but this was about new content (value based on consumption) and not about social content (the continual stream of personal data) which is about signals that create spikes, pulses, waves and trends .  There is a re...

Pressure adds as companies come forward to reveal that they are selling your data - why is this a headline?.   My book is focussed on the topic of exchanging your data for valu  and the business models that are being used.  I have written over 60 blogs about selling your data in the barter for Free.  Whilst I love headlines; can we re-focus from shock to there is an exchange and what value is created! Article from the Register "TomTom sorry for giving customer driving data to cops" "Navigation device maker TomTom has apologized for supplying driving data collected from customers to police to use in catching speeding motorists.  According to the register tThe data, including historical speed, has been sold to local and regional governments in the Netherlands to help police set speed traps, Dutch newspaper AD  reported here , with a  Google translation here . As more smartphones offer GPS navigation service, TomTom has ...