Consumer Privacy

In our guest posts here on Geekdad, we at CDT talk a lot about how Internet users need stronger privacy protections on the Internet. We even launched the Take Back Your Privacy campaign last month to encourage others to speak out if they want their privacy. The Internet does not wait for corporations or the law to catch up to its needs, though, so the tech-savvy privacy advocates among us find ways to protect themselves (even if those ways make the Internet less fun to use). Using browser plug-ins is one route you can take to secure your family’s online privacy.

There is no shortage of sad stories involving the loss of one's dignity, job, or significant other, thanks to some embarrassing picture, bit of information, or errant one-liner cluelessly tossed into the fast moving bitstream of some social media network. When we hear these stories, we cluck at such oversight, shake our heads in amazement, or whisper to ourselves some version of "there but for the grace of ... go I."

But when we learn that revealing tidbits are being culled from social networking sites by someone wearing a badge and used as "evidence" in the course of a federal investigation, the discussion ratchets up to a different level altogether.

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There is something fundamentally wrong in the debate on how to control online privacy when Internet users don't even know what they don't know.  Case in point.  Earlier this year a survey showed that most Internet users believe that the mere presence of the words "privacy policy" on a website means that site cannot share information about them without their written consent.  Wrong.  What users don't know is that the words "privacy policy" can encompass a broad range of policy from true commitments to privacy protection at one end to statements reserving the right to use personal information "in any way and for any purpose.” 

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