The topic I chose to blog about is web privacy. This broad topic includes password privacy, privacy on social networking sites, and location-sharing applications.
My inspiration for this topic came from my summer research at Carnegie Mellon University where I worked in the Usable Privacy and Security Lab. Here, I researched Facebook privacy settings and controls. Facebook constantly changes its privacy settings and recently the changes have attracted a lot of attention in the media.
As of 2010, the new privacy settings on Facebook had 5,830 words - more words than the U.S. Constitution! The information visualization below shows the evolution of Facebook privacy and how more settings have become public by default over the years. (click the picture to be taken to the animated version)
At the research lab, we ran empirical studies and found that many people do not know how to use the privacy controls and features that Facebook already has in place. This finding sparked me to learn about privacy issues on other websites as well.
Therefore, this semester I plan to delve into the privacy settings and features of Twitter, LinkedIn and other SNS. In addition, I would like to look at password privacy for secure sites like online banking vs. other sites such as e-mail or Youtube. It would also be interesting to include information about Foursquare, Facebook Places and other location sharing services. Also, I plan to include information on other privacy and usability issues related to websites (not just the ones listed above) and maybe even privacy with technology not strictly on the web.
Hopefully this blog can help to clear the cloud of mystery surrounding technology and privacy.
I think this is a really important topic to examine. As the web and related technologies become more and more intertwined with our lives, we are going to have the potential to lose a lot of control over our privacy. Something you could look at would be privacy with all of Google's services. I am a huge fan of Google, and use Gmail, my Android phone, and google search all day, every day. That being said, I am starting to get increasingly uneasy about just how much information they are collecting about us. Even with an Android phone, when you first sign in and activate it, you basically have to sign an agreement saying that Google has access to all of your stuff and your location. And we are even blogging with a Google product right now! This comment will be permanently tied to my Google account, just another piece of my online profile that a giant, powerful corporation knows. I look forward to reading about your findings about online privacy.
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