online tracking – Media! Tech! Parenting!

data collecting, data sharing, digital life, online tracking, parents and technology

Do You Really Understand How Much You Are Tracked in Your Web Activities?

Posted on July 31, 2019July 31, 2019 by Marti Weston

When we use Chrome, Google’s tracking cookies follow us everywhere, and the video below perfectly illustrates how these trackers operate in our digital lives. It was produced by Washington Post technology columnists, Geoffrey A. Fowler and James Pace-Cornsilk.

Enjoy watching, but also ask yourself how much of your personal data and your daily activities you want to share with these trackers? Moreover, how much of your children’s data do you want these cookies to collect? In a connected world, digital life is complicated as is personal privacy.

This video appears in a Post article, Google’s Data Collection Drives Some Consumers Away, by Greg Bensinger.

FYI, I have stopped using Chrome completely (I use Duck Duck Go as a browser), and I am migrating to an email that I pay a small fee for each month. To learn more about what I use you may want to read two past MediaTech Parenting posts.

How Much Privacy Do I Have? Duck Duck Go Gives More

More on Using Duck Duck Go & My Extra Bit of Privacy

21st Century life, advertising, data collecting, digital life, online tracking, privacy

How I Try to Maintain Privacy (or at Least Some) in My Digital World

Posted on March 4, 2019March 9, 2019 by Marti Weston

Today a person’s personal information is a commodity, and privacy is a struggle to maintain. I want to stop (or at least slow down) Facebook, Google and all their advertisers (not to mention Cambridge Analytica) from vacuuming up my information.

Of course I’ve turned on the privacy controls on all my accounts and apps, and I recheck them on a regular basis, but that’s only one small part of the personal privacy picture. Below are 14 more steps that I take to ensure that at least some of my personal information is less available. Continue reading “How I Try to Maintain Privacy (or at Least Some) in My Digital World” →

21st Century life, data collecting, digital life, kids and privacy, online data collecting, online tracking

How Much Privacy Do I Have? DuckDuckGo Gives More

Posted on June 10, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Although I believed that I had taken significant steps to maintain a modicum of privacy in my 21st Century digital life, I was wrong.

I am less than halfway through Bruce Schneier’s book, Data and Goliath, all about the hidden methods of collecting our personal data, and already I am discovering that my personal privacy plan has many holes. I’m not that different from most adults. Privacy, however, is going away, and we collaborate in the process by not making any specific decisions and by going along with the ways the Internet tracks us. We do have choices, and we educators and parents need to learn a lot more about maintaining privacy and then share what we’ve learned with young people.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 10.19.26 PM — Vanity Fair has 11 trackers and widgets.

In the book’s first chapters Schneier addresses data collection, how trackers get added to my computers and digital devices as little files called cookies. With a quick search, I found over 1,000 cookies and cache files on my laptop, despite the fact that I only allow cookies from places that I visit (about 650 were cookies). Some of these are useful and don’t bother me — like the cookies for the several catalogs where I regularly make purchases, the newspapers which I read, and the educational and musical organizations which I like. Read more about cache. Continue reading “How Much Privacy Do I Have? DuckDuckGo Gives More” →

21st Century Learning, connected learning, online learning, online tracking, privacy

Is Privacy Protected When a Student Learns Online?

Posted on May 18, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Image made with Wordfoto with a picture taken at the Library of Congress.

If you think that the digital world may be getting it together on the privacy front, at least when it comes to children, think again.

A disturbing article, Data Mining Your Children, published in Politico, describes how for-profit online learning companies provide digital textbooks, connected learning programs, and record keeping options while collecting an enormous amount of information on individual students. The question is, what will they do with this personal data? Politico is a Washington newspaper that covers national government policy and politics. Continue reading “Is Privacy Protected When a Student Learns Online?” →

21st Century life, online tracking, parents and technology, privacy

Retailers Track Adults by Monitoring Device Wifi

Posted on March 9, 2014March 10, 2014 by Marti Weston

We most often worry about advertisers tracking our children online but sometimes forget to think about how much we adults are followed around digitally.

FTC Privacy Series — FTC Privacy Seminar on Mobile Device Tracking

Check out the Washington Post article, Privacy Advocates Push Back on Stores’ Tracking, describing how retailers keep track their customers by monitoring smartphone wifi signals. No guidelines currently regulate this type of information collecting so no privacy parameters exist. Essentially this mobile device tracking is a way to get more information about shoppers, track what they do, and target advertising and target advertising more effectively.

The article, by Amerita Jayakuma, describes how a Maryland legislator has proposed a bill to require retailers to inform people if the store is watching them while they shop. The Federal Trade Commission recently held a seminar on mobile device tracking.

I’ve been wondering for some time if I was tracked a few months ago when I visited a huge regional outlet mall with my husband.

Continue reading “Retailers Track Adults by Monitoring Device Wifi” →

digital footprints, digital parenting, Do Not Track Kids Act, online security, online tracking, privacy

Stop Tracking Kids: Protect Their Privacy on the Web

Posted on October 3, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

privacyLOC — Image made with WordFoto with a picture taken at the Library of Congress.

While people worry a lot about kids and their digital access, the most critical aspect to me — and the most likely to cause an eventual problem for a child — is the degree to which information can be tracked and collected while children work and play in the web.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

For more information, read Tell the FTC to Stand Up for Children’s Privacy at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood website.

digital citizenship, digital parenting, electronic communication, online tracking, parents and technology, privacy

Big Tech Thinkers Talk About Privacy

Posted on March 12, 2012March 19, 2019 by Marti Weston

Turkle Ted — Sherry Turkle’s 2012 TED Talk

NPR’s All Tech Considered blog has posted a thought-provoking piece on privacy (February 29, 2012).

In New Ways to Think About Online Privacy, Nina Gregory shares what she heard at TED Long Beach where some major technology thinkers and innovators (some speakers, some attenders) shared their thoughts about what Gregory calls “privacy hygiene” (and about what they might be teaching their kids about the subject).

You may not have heard of some of the companies represented, but the thoughts about privacy are worth reading.

In Gregory’s article read about the thoughts of: Continue reading “Big Tech Thinkers Talk About Privacy” →