Tag Archives: online privacy
Communities
Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg on Women in Workplace
Sheryl Sandberg delivered the commencement speech at the all-women college Barnard this past week, and she had quite a message to deliver to these ladies. Sheryl Sandberg is the COO at Facebook, and in charge of keeping techs most popular company in check. But the challenge she has posed to these Barnard grads was simple. She explained to the women that essentially, “men run the world”. She explained that women have the opportunity, now more than ever, to realize their ambition and act on it. While it may seem that many tech, and even social media companies, are run by men, she encourages women everywhere to get involved. She did not become Number 2 at Facebook without ambition. Graduates and parents alike applauded the speech, with one student even saying that her speech was a “perfect fit” for the way they teach at Barnard. What do you think? Is the gender gap still too large? Will tech companies be willing to hire female leaders with open arms?
Tools and Technology
Proposed Law Would Require Social Networks to be Private by Default
The newest move in the fight for social media privacy has come from California Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro). She has proposed a new law that would change the way social networks operate their privacy systems, and these social networks are not happy about it.
As the long standing debate of online privacy policies rages on, consumers have become increasingly anxious about their personal information being shared with advertisers. As consumers voice their opinions, the leaders in the online space have to learn to manage a healthy balance of: sharing information with brands/advertisers to drive successful campaign performance vs. continuing to make consumers feel safe in their online behaviors.
In the social space, consumers trust their social networks and feel that the information they share should not leave the tight circle of friends that they have cultivated. In the specific case of Facebook, consumers have spoken out against the service sharing their personal information with advertisers, driving Facebook to create new privacy regulations to ensure its members feel safe and comfortable. But are these social networks actually doing anything wrong? As Mark Zuckerberg points out during his announcement a few months ago, Facebook isn’t sharing anyone’s personal information; all of the targeting used by brands is actually done by Facebook itself. It seems that a lot of the concern by the Facebook consumers stems from their lack of knowledge about what advertiser targeting actual entails.
Lindsay Lewis | Critical Mass Chicago
The electro-bass voided, the rock and roll of the high-tide faded, the scene of holiday boaters and people dancing on boats for the sake of a three day weekend blurred into a distant background and suddenly my ears fell numb to all but the words “Finding these vulnerabilities, you can train a monkey to do it… But at the same time, hacking is about the path of least resistance. There’s no need to overly complicate things if a simple sequel injection can work.”
Those chilling words, spoken by Patrick Stoey, a key contributor to the Biggest Cyber Crime in History, were recanted in the June 10th issue of Rolling Stone. Albert Gonzalez, commonly hailed the “Capone” of Cyber Crime, enlisted Stoey and dozens of other hackers to execute some of the most sophisticated hacking heists of all time- targeting hundreds of high-profile companies like TJ Maxx, Barnes & Noble, and 7-11. The most pervasive of them all pirated the credit card numbers of over 130 million Heartland Payment Systems customers.
I put the magazine down for a minute to digest what I’d just read. As sympathetic for the victims as I naturally wanted to feel, my rationale classified both parties as naive. If a monkey had the brains to make off with hundreds of millions of credit cards and check out with millions in cash from a series of hacks that impacted an unquantifiable number of people, then “farming” money from 400 App Store Users seems like no-brainer to me.
Catching both stories simultaneously put a lens on the state of my own information security, pin-pointing it’s gaping holes and flimsy insulation and the more I sought to isolate my vulnerabilities, the more of myself the lens began to reveal. In a World boasting ease of access, we can quickly and efficiently maneuver into, out of, and between windows. So easily in fact, that we’ve begun treating them like the ones on our homes, leaving them open for a cool draft of cyber crime to circulate within and swiftly cash out. As the evolution of Web 2.0 has begun shaping the way we work, it has blindsidedly begun to shape the way we are.
Our everyday social behavior on Web 2.0 and mobile applications, can tell us a lot about our vulnerability to cyber crime because web applications and related technologies accounted for 82% of all security vulnerabilities on the web last year, according to a report released by Cenzic, a leader in web application security. More sobering than that, are the vulnerabilities themselves- Cyber Criminals not only capture our private data but our behavior as well. The top ten vulnerabilities on the web today fit seamlessly into the little things we do online everyday, living on the profiles of those we “add as a friend” but vaguely know at all, yet we trust to share our play-by-plays with and trust the info they share too. They patiently wade in the background of sidebar widgets on websites we trust enough to visit everyday. They hang out behind the buttons we so love… I mean “Like.” They dress themselves up as character limit-friendly little links and do all of the things we do on the websites we visit most
Using a scenario we commonly run into on Facebook as an example, the Flow Chart below demonstrates the ease of access a hacker has to execute the top ten types of attack mechanisms on the web today in one fell swoop.
Ever since the early days of the Internet, technologies have been developed to track online behavior. Over time many of these have developed into what is commonly referred to as web analytics and now Marketing Sciences.
Some people believe this is a serious invasion of your privacy. Because you sit in the privacy of your home to surf the Web, there’s a belief that your activities should be completely private. In reality though, while you may be surfing in your underwear (ok, maybe that’s just me), people like me can “see” what you’re up to.
Here’s how it works, at a basic level. Most web pages have bits of code that are invisible to the average person. Between this code and cookies that get created and stored on your browser, back end systems are able to track a wide variety of actions that you may take on one or across multiple websites.
In order to explore this further, I’d like to separate out a couple of levels of privacy.
- I.D. level privacy – Credit card information, phone numbers, your address etc. fall into this category. This is the kind of thing that I could commit identity theft with.
- Preferences privacy – Data about stuff you like and perhaps have purchased in the past, but nothing I could stalk you with. You like cookies and organic gardening, but I have no idea “who” you are unless you sign in and tell me specifically.
- Browsing privacy – Data about how you moved around in a website and what you looked at. You downloaded three recipe cards on supertastycookies.com. “You” are totally anonymous.
Legitimate web analytics and advertising tracking operate mostly in level three (browsing) and sometimes in level two (preferences), but never in level one (I.D. level). (To be clear, level one is and should always be off limits to the realms of web analytics and Marketing Science.)
Why? For many reasons, but primarily to make your experience of the web better, easier, faster and more effective. The data can be used to optimize web sites as well as customize the content you might see so it better fits your personal preferences, and in so doing help companies achieve their business goals.
I will also point out that the data is also used to present you with advertising that you’re more likely to be interested in, and therefore more likely to click on hence making advertiser companies more money.
Privacy advocates would promote the idea of a complete cone of silence and that all three levels of privacy would be completely protected. In this scenario, no data would be tracked (and I would be unemployed). Think of this like walking around a very large city with a cloak of invisibility on. You can interact with the world, but no one can see you.
The reality is that when you walk around a big city, people can see you. They may not know who you are or where you live, but you’re not invisible.
If you go into a large department store, you’re being recorded on security cameras. Much like most web tracking systems, the camera doesn’t know who you are, where you live, or what your credit card number is, just that you were there. If someone is paying attention they might also know that you looked at handbags and shoes before you left.
