The Past Meets the Present

Pre-course: “I own a myTouch (Android phone), sony vaio netbook, sony vaio laptop, 19 inch tv, ipod, ipod radio dock and GPS. I use both my laptops everyday. The netbook I take the class and the laptop I use in my apartment. Usually, I don't make phone calls using my myTouch. I text/gChat all day and occasionally call my parents. I also use my phone to tweet or play games to avoid falling asleep in class. At the beginning of the year,my resolution was to write in my blog everyday...but that soon fell apart towards the middle of spring semester. Perhaps I'll try again next year.

As a computer science major, I would never strictly say that technology could be a foe in the future. After all, too much of any good thing can be bad. I feel that technology does make some things simpler but as more and more people use technology, there is the risk of abuse. I do not think there is too much technology. For my sake (and future career), I hope that there is more technology used at school, work and play.

I feel somewhat informed about newer technologies. My summer research lab constantly send out news about emerging technologies in usable privacy and security But I am more than comfortable with learning more about it.“

Post-course: I would have to say that I am still the same person described in my introduction post. Over the past 3 months, I have been exposed to a lot of information about the various uses of technology. While this blog on privacy may make it seem as though I consider technology a foe of the future, it has proved to me that there is risk of using technology in a negative way.

Based on my experience this semester, there are many positive aspects of digital information. Digital information makes things more easily accessible. Mobile applications such as ELMS allow us, as students, to manage our grades and assignments. Many news sources also have mobile versions of their newspapers and publications allowing subscribers to access the most recent news anywhere they go. Digital information makes things accessible faster. Twitter feeds of different users enable others to find out about breaking news in the matter of seconds. For example, I found out about the Haiti earthquakes through Twitter. Digital information can make information more secure. Also, the new release of Google Instant makes searching for digital information faster than before. Now with fingerprint scanners, iris scanners and more advanced forms of authentication, information is better protected.

However, there are also some negative aspects of digital information. Because information is available faster, negative and incriminating information is made available faster. This can have horrible consequences such in the case of WikiLeaks. The owner of WikiLeaks may have thought that allowing people to access such secret information would be beneficial to the public, but now he is hiding for his life. Also, the use of digital information needs to constantly be managed so that it is more secure.

I think that this class, although not the main focus, helped me learn some new photography skills. Hopefully in the future I can develop these skills into a hobby. In addition, I learned about new uses of technology and how they apply to other areas such as public relations and public health. Lastly, it helped me learn about technologies such as 3G versus 4G connection speeds and Bluetooth.

For my peers who did not take this class, I would advise them not to be afraid of technology but to embrace it. However, embrace it in a healthy way so that it is not controlling your life. If people are told that only technology can be used to solve problems, in the future we may have people like the woman and man in the following video:

Also, beware that not everything is more efficient just because you use technology to get it done. Some technologies are just created for entertainment and not for productivity-sake. After taking this class, I can safely say that now I appreciate the consolidation of devices because using the iPod touch along with my Android phone and regular iPod confirmed that sometimes technology can be too much.

Privacy and Security: Expert Edition

Security and privacy online has attracted great attention in recent years. A recent survey revealed that 67% people are either somewhat concerned or very concerned regarding the privacy of their personal medical records. What’s more is that 80% of people surveyed said they are very concerned about identity theft or fraud.

Currently, medical professional are having trouble keeping health information secure. Even companies such as Google and Microsoft now have personal health record services where users can track medical history online. Earlier this semester Google came to campus and gave a technical talk about Google Health (health.google.com). It wasn't long before students in the audience raised their hand asking how secure would this site be and how would Google prevent the information from being leaked.

Speaking of leaks, the WikiLeaks documents revealed that U.S. officials have been asked to start collecting "fingerprints, facial images, DNA and iris scans" of foreigners and other persons of interest.

Interesting fact: The state of California has been storing DNA data of newborns for the past 30 years without parental knowledge.

The rise of DNA identification is not the only new form of spying. U.S. federal agents are now being encouraged to connect to others using social networks in order to spy on them. We must begin to create rules on the sharing of DNA, the ethics of using DNA sequences and the ethics of using information on social networking sites.

Another highly relevant privacy issue revolves around the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) body scanners. People are outraged that TSA officials are being hired to scan naked body images of passengers going through security. They feel that these scanners reveal to much information. However, TSA is taking the gradually-adapting approach of having technologies replace humans. They think this will eliminate the privacy issues being raised. While this is a good start, there are still many kinks that must be worked out. The algorithms behind such software, many times won’t know what they’re looking for if they’ve never seen it. Also, many dangerous items can be disguised to look like harmless objects. Therefore, it has been suggested that this algorithm be used with existing technologies such as hazardous chemical detection.

Some people admit that we just have to “say goodbye to privacy”, if we haven’t done so already. With mobile applications that share location (such as GroupOn, Foursquare and Facebook), they must make the user believe that the value received from using the service outweighs any perceived risks from updating and sharing their location.

A computer science professor and expert in security at the University of Maryland, interviewed HERE, thinks that people should not express anger over their "private" information being leaked over the web because they check a box agreeing to the terms of the website. Therefore the website can do what they want with the information from this point forward. He also feels that privacy is a loosely defined term. Even he feels that we don't have enough privacy as we think we do. But to "function in society, we really don't have any choice". I think that this is the case because if you want to be an active citizen engaging in new technologies, you're eventually going to have to sign up for a social networking account. Or, you might have to buy something online, thus risking your credit information. Or, it may be more convenient to pay bills online, also risking credit information. Just a basic search for information online allows companies to track your every move and advertise to you based on your "private" searches.

Even the president and leaders of the United States have unofficially declared our times as a cyber security era. Millions of people will soon be hired to oversee the protection of our computer systems, especially our government and military systems. Ever since this new initiative was launched, millions of dollars have been invested into cyber security research and training. The University of Maryland is aggressively hiring for this field and will announce its new cyber security center, MC² on Thursday, December 9^th.

Cyber security is not only a prevalent field in the United States. Even the U.K. is training people for positions in this field. Moreover, credit card companies around the world such as in Africa are investing in protecting their customers’ online identities. It’s all one big snowball effect as the problem becomes larger and larger. Without a high level of security, credit card fraud occurs and decreases customer trust in the company. This, in turn, affects usage rates and these usage rates affect profit. If all credit card companies adopted high levels of privacy and security for their customers, it could potentially help the global economy.

Therefore, as the use of technology increases daily, so our actual privacy decreases, although our perceived privacy may increase. Expert opinions, actions of our nation's leader and concerns of every day citizens lead me to believe so. What do you think?

TwitterNation: A Twitter App Review

PAUSE! This is a break from you regularly scheduled programming of online privacy. While my following post about Twitter apps may relate, I am not specifically referring to privacy below.

Twitter applications are usually considered in terms of mobile phones. However, there are apps for the computer and for the browsers on these

computers. The following will include a discussion of apps for iPhones, Android phones and other devices. Also, each of these apps require users to have a twitter account or to create one to use the app.

iPhone Apps (to be downloaded from the iTunes store):

Tweetie 2 (shown on right) is an application only available for iPod touches or iPhones. It allows one to explore all online features of Twitter, but from a phone. It shortens URLs and allows one to preview the URL when posting links to followers. It allows for the integration of multiple accounts and can filter the timeline. The app also incorporates twitLonger, providing a tool to post tweets of longer than 140 characters, hashtag definitions, for those who may be new to Twitter or those who may not know what a hashtag means, and offline mode. This application won an Apple design award in 2009.

Twittelator is solely for Apple devices. This app has a Pro and a Lite version. The Pro version comes with the feature to copy pictures to other tweets, use Song.ly to embed MP3 links, and much more. With this app, you can receive stock tweets by searching for a specific stock symbol. From these searches, users can build portfolios to keep track of recent mentions.

Birdhouse is an app for Apple devices whose sole purpose is to give users more control over writing for Twitter. It’s more of a tweet drafing app allowing someone to save tweet drafts which is beneficial for capturing ideas offline, even in airplane mode. Users can integrate and publish these drafts from multiple twitter accounts. If an error occurs, this app allows the user to back everything up by e-mail.

Android apps (to be downloaded from the Android market):

Touiter is an Android app which has a free and premium version. The premium version allows users to integrate multiple accounts and filtering. It also provides 3 different widgets to be used on the home screen. I personally have used this app and with that the free version came with at least one home widget. The premium version also shortens URLs and in the feature will include TwitLonger, the same feature in the Tweetie 2 app above.

Twicca is an Android-specific app where you can receive notifications an post statuses like the other Twitter apps. Similar to the others, geotagging, widgets, image previews, and URL shortening are also included. The difference is that you can download plug-ins with this app to upload bookmarks to twitter and configure with twitpic.

Twidroyd, (shown on right) of course by its name, is an Android-only app which includes custom

alert ringtones (“tweet tweet”), gelocation support, different widgets, auto-completion of hashtags and usernames and a live preview of media. In addition, it suggests a list of other interesting people to follow, similar to the user suggestions feature on the actual twitter website. The only difference, stated on the website, betweetn the $3.99 premium app and the free app is that the free app doesn’t have a dark pro application icon. If this is the only difference, I’d gladly take the free version anyday!

Other apps:

Lastly, there are other apps such as UnTweeps which is a web app that can be accessed by any device that has the internet. It uses twitter’s login system (API) to authenticate users and allows people to unfollow people who haven’t updated their profiles in a certain number of days. There is also a whitelist feature where you can still follow people who don’t tweet often but don’t list them on your followers list. Untweep Pro is a paid version of Untweep and it’s for people who may want to use the app more than 3 times a month or unfollow people who haven’t tweeted within the last frequent days. The user could buy an account for $1.37 for 3 days or pay a subscription of $5 per month.

Mixero is another application that is compatible with the iPhone, and several computer operating systems (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux). Mixero provides support for Facebook and Twitter.

Regarding Twitter, users can filter groups and autogenerate usernames. It allows one to preview images or watch YouTube videos within their timeline. On all versions, there is an avatars mode which lets you see your friends photos and how many of their tweets you have not read.

Seesmic (shown above) is another app that incorporates multiple platforms – Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows phones, macs, and PCs. What makes this app intriguing is that it can be used within different internet browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. Each of these has its own specific features but they all allow you to simultaneously update statuses on multiple sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Buzz.

Pervasive Computing on the Go

With the application-accessible mobile phones and devices of today, there are many location-based applications. These geolocation applications report your location to others and associate locations to your location. However there can be privacy consequences associated with such applications. While some of the consequences such as when someone reports an emergency from a cell phone, the location of the mobile caller is reported to the dispatcher, imagine if this information was compromised. A negative example persists when a rental car was tracked and found speeding on 3 occasions and the driver was fined $450 by the rental company. Also the website PleaseRobMe.com (similar to one mentioned in class) takes tweets with location data attached and can be used by thieves t track when you are at home or not and rob you while you are away.

There are many applications available that play on these location-based features. Gowalla is like the popular Foursquare allowing check-ins but its partnerships with companies enable one to exchange virtual items for their real-life counterpart for free. Another, Loopt, offers freebies for things going on near your phone’s location. While there are risks, most geolocation apps allow you to set how much information is to be shared. At times, you may have to surrender privacy for the features of cool apps.

One cool app that enhances privacy protection has been made by Lookout Mobile Security. This app, Privacy Advisor, helps to ease concerns about mobile privacy by scanning each app that a person is about to download on their phones. They app then tells the owner of the mobile device what part of their private information the app can access. It is better to be safe than sorry because although it is very rare to get a virus on your smartphone or other mobile device, it can be lost or stolen, causing private data to be compromised.

Research has shown that users have an average of 31 applications on their mobile devices which can access their information. Further 19 of these apps can access their location. Surprisingly 91% of consumers are concerned about phone privacy but only 7%S are very confident that they understand what private information is being accessed by third party services on their phone.

The rise of anonymous apps has concerned researchers. With these apps, the identity of the user need not be known. For example, when walking past a coffee shop, your phone can be alerted of specials currently taking place within the shop. This is different from walking into a coffee shop and using your cell phone to pay for your food instead of paying with cash. In this sense, record of who you are and your credit card information must be kept. This anonymity is called hitchhiking because the location itself is of primary interest.

Another study took place where a group of researchers went to a location to see if there was any identity or tracking violations using an application called Bustle. The purpose of this study was to see if sensitive data could be collected in location-based applications. In the case of the app, Bustle, it collected information that could not be connected to the user so there were no tracking or identity violations. However, other research has shown that users’ levels of intrusiveness and privacy concerns are much higher for location-tracking apps than for apps that are just aware of one’s position.

People have to be aware of the risks associated with geolocation apps but I don't think they should be afraid of them because in the end, how much you share is up to you.

Photo source: The Atlantic Wire

Other sources: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/bits-pics-video-calls-from-the-top-of-the-world/?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://mmlab.snu.ac.kr/courses/2005_advanced_internet/handout/paper/40.Wireless%20location%20privacy%20protection.pdf

http://www.pcworld.com/article/192803-2/geolocation_101_how_it_works_the_apps_and_your_privacy.html

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZHV1XG4HBIKA5QE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN?articleID=228100048&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

Privacy Photo Phun

The photo to the left depicts privacy in general to the average viewer. But to those who know a thing or two about technology, it also depicts computer privacy because the UPS room is a room full of servers that connect people to the internet.



For this photo, I decided to take advantage of the rule of thirds, keeping the important part of the photo on the side and not in the center while the door, which leads you into what the sign is talking about, is on the other third of the picture.





The photo on the right shows a student hard at work using the internet to complete his homework. Although this photo doesn't use the rule of thirds, I made sure to have good light quality so that you can see each thing taking place in this scene.

Honestly, these 2 photos were not as good as my first photos taken because I was using my camera phone and didn't use any special effects. Also, it was difficult to find pictures of online privacy because most people do not like others taking photos of them doing privacy-sensitive activities.

A Photograph Investigation

The descriptions indirectly answer the question - what makes a good photograph?

The image on the right is a good example because, although the terminology may be unfamiliar, the point is made. Industry standard tools and applications are not as secure as administration, hence this is why the administration part of the digram has a secure lock on it, and the industry standard tools and applications do not not. (EXPLANATORY/GENERIC)

The diagram on the left is a

good example because it tells what the information is representing - the availability of your personal

data on Facebook. Therefore, a viewer can easily see how private their Facebook profile was in April

2010. (EXPLANATORY)

The photo below is not a good example. It poses that there is some issue with Facebook and privacy but doesn't say what it is. (GENERIC)

The screenshot on the right is a good example because it alerts the viewer that this issue

of Time would tell how to protect online privacy

and persuades the reader to click the link and read the magazine. (EXPLANATORY)

The photo below is not a good example. When searching on Google for the

word "privacy", this image appeared. But, this image looks more like something is a secret or that the person wants quietness. It doesn't reveal anything about computer privacy.(GENERIC)

Cell Phone Privacy

The following post is a summary of the information that was found as part of a research project for a journalism class. More information on other research projects in this class can be found on the course site HERE.

For this project, my partner and I designed a survey whose goal was to observe the difference, if any, between adults and college students on their opinions of cell phone privacy. We conducted the survey using Google Survey and collected 56 responses. Of these response, 21 were adults and 35 for college students.

In general we didn't find much difference between adults and teens. Out of the 21 adults surveyed, more than half (52%) owned a smartphone and 60% of college students owned one which is showing that the participating gap with these new devices is decreasing.

When asked how concerned they were that people can track their information when using a cell phone, neither groups were very concerned.

An interesting difference is that out of the 56 people surveyed, only 3 of them got into legal trouble over something that was said on their cell phone. More interestingly, all 3 of the participants were college students.

While most people were familiar with cell phone privacy features, it is important to note that more adults take advantage of registering their phone numbers on the National Do Not Call registry. However the majority between both groups were on some mass text message alert system. In addition,many people knew that when buying or selling a used cell phone that personal information is not automatically deleted from the device. But, most people in both age groups did not have knowledge of the E911 feature. which automatically tells law enforcement you address when you call for help.

Overall, the study performed shows that there isn't a significant difference of cell phone privacy issues with the 2 populations and the many of them understand some of the special features that are currently available on cell phones to aid in efficiency and privacy.