Defending The Kingdom

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to control your personal information at all times. Companies and governments that store personal data sometimes screw up in the worst way:

The British government struggled Wednesday to explain its loss of computer disks containing detailed personal information on 25 million Britons [about 40% of the population], including an unknown number of bank account identifiers, in what analysts described as potentially the most significant privacy breach of the digital era.

You can’t do much when something like this happens. One thing you can do, however, is make sure your passwords are strong.

Experts said the information could allow crimes beyond identity theft. Some people use the name of a child or part of an address as a password on a bank account, so the combination of these details could allow someone to break their code.

How do you feel about this? From an NYTimes article, Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You:

Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?

Interesting Wired News article on why people won’t pay for protection from privacy intrusions.

Privacy is fast becoming the trendy concept in online marketing. An increasing number of companies are flaunting the steps they’ve taken to protect the privacy of their customers. But studies suggest consumers won’t pay even 25 cents to protect their data.

Later, one of the people interviewed explains why he thinks this is the case:

The thing about consumer privacy is it’s really a death from a thousand cuts. With any given click or any given web page the loss of information is usually very subtle. The fact that you may get more spam or pay more for flowers because you live in a wealthy ZIP code are just single drops in a tsunami of privacy violations.

Too bad. I certainly sympathize sometimes with the sense of hopelessness about keeping my privacy that many people experience. And, for some, perhaps the costs of combating privacy concerns are higher than the costs from losing one’s privacy.

Update (30 April 2007): Rogers is through answering my emails. In their latest message to me, they implied that they had said all they wanted to and that further questions should be directed to The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada oversees Rogers’ personal information handling practices. If your privacy concerns are not addressed to your satisfaction by Rogers you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for further guidance

So, Rogers doesn’t want to consider the subject further. The reasoning is this: if the Privacy Commissioner thinks Rogers handles privacy adequately, so should Rogers’ customers.

(continue reading…)

After AOL published its users’ private search data last month, you may be wondering where it’s safe to do your searches. Who Which is the most trustworthy search engine? Is there something you can do so that you don’t have to trust the search engines at all? (continue reading…)