Sign about not having anything to hide

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I don’t think most people understand online privacy.

They’re pretty sure the NSA and other government agencies are sucking up their data, and probably have been for years. But they largely adopt the philosphy in the image and assume their phone calls and internet traffic are not important enough for anyone to notice or care about.

Their information is inconsequential by being buried in a giant pile with trillions of other bits. Or they are resigned to the matter and offer a “what can you do” shrug. Or worse, they support the idea of that giving up some of their privacy will result in greater protection from the bogey man being presented to frighten them this week.

On the other hand, whatever the attitude towards government surveillance, most people seem quite complacent when it comes to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other tech companies collecting their data2. In fact, they upload their personal information to these sites at a furious pace every day. And a growing number of people are happily adding to that data pile by buying devices that keep a running record of what they say and do.

For some reason, people seem to assume these billion dollar corporations (and a vast of array of cool startups) have their best interest at heart. The settings Facebook provides by default will assure their privacy. Amazon won’t tell anyone about the products I’ve bought. Google will keep my search history and email contents secret.

Sure. Except for the information provided to the marketing departments of thousands of companies. Companies who pay large amounts of money so you can have “free” services. When you pour all of that data together into some increasingly sophisticated algorithms, they gain some very valuable information. About what you buy (or want to buy), where you travel, who communicate with, and much, much more.

Now, I could very easily drop into conspiracy theory territory in this post, and I don’t want to go there. Many of these free online services have great value. In fact, I add many little bits of personal info to Google’s massive data pile every day. I even teach classes on their map-related resources to help teachers use them with students, and I have no illusion that Google isn’t collecting information from interactions with those maps.

But I’m also very picky about which services I use and what information I will provide. For example, I don’t post anything to Facebook (I do have an account) for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their TOS. And I’ve actually read more than few terms of service documents, and keep a short list of interesting translations and sites that help others understand what they are agreeing to.

Regardless of my personal preferences, however, this is a topic that all teachers need to better understand. They must help their students learn to protect themselves online, as well as doing a better job of evaluating the software and web services they bring into the classroom.

It may appear that Google, Microsoft, and the other companies (big and small) are keeping their free/cheap education web services “closed” to the outside world. But students (and you) are still providing data with everything they do. (Just look at what can be learned from a single photograph.) And those corporations are getting better everyday at monetizing your information.