Tag: privacy

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My GDPR Statement

Like you, I have also been inundated with updated privacy policy emails lately in the wake of the new GDPR rules (General Data Protection Regulation). Everyone wants to tell me what they are doing to protect my data. To be honest, it’s not something that’s been bothering me, but thanks for clogging my inbox anyway.

It gets silly… I’ve heard that some schools are using GDPR as an excuse to avoid having things online, such as refusing to post photos or student work, not allowing students to use online services, etc. I’ve even heard it suggested that you can’t read blogs anymore as it infringes on the GDPR rules! I am pretty sure that was not the purpose of GDPR (and we certainly should not allow some rule designed for the European Union to be affecting schools as far away as New Zealand!)

I also heard that some bloggers are adding GDPR compliance statements to their blogs for fear of breaking the rules. Which I think is ridiculous, but here goes…

This blog does not, has never, and will never, use your personal information in any way. I don’t collect it, and if I did I wouldn’t share it.  The only time you “give” me your data is if you leave a comment here, but that’s entirely up to you and you can be anonymous if you want.  The full privacy policy is here.

If you have privacy concerns raised by the GDPR about leaving comments on this (or any other) blog, then here’s my advice. Don’t leave comments.

In fact, if you have privacy concerns raised by the GDPR about simply reading blogs, then here’s my advice. Don’t read blogs.

Of course, if you don’t like paranoid Europeans telling you what to do, then do whatever you want.

 

Header image CC BY-SA: GDPR and ePrivacy on Flickr by Dennis van der Hiejden

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Watch Me Drive

There is an advertisement on TV at the moment for an Australian car insurance company that encourages drivers to download an app to their phone to find out who is “Australia’s Best Driver“.  Here’s the ad…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0c4JfXwd3U

When you download and install the app it starts by asking you a few questions…  your name, gender, email address, home address, etc. Then it keeps track of your driving using GPS location, timestamps, speed tracking, etc for at least the next 300km. In fact, it even defaults to an autostart mode so that you don’t have to remember to turn it on. Every so often it will check in with you to make sure that you are in fact the driver of the trips it’s been tracking. Then it scores your driving style in an attempt to find out who is the best driver in Australia.

Think about it. As well as knowing exactly who you are, it knows how fast you’re driving, when you’re driving, where you’ve been, who was driving and how long for, and even what your phone was doing as you drove. And remember, it just starts tracking automatically every time you drive. Without you even needing to turn it on.

Over time, the data will show whether you speed or not, whether you drive long distances without taking a break, whether you accelerate and brake erratically, what times of day you drive, and of course whether you’re using your phone as you drive. This is not just Big Data.  This is highly personalised data about you as an individual.

But it’s just a game right? You’re encouraged to compete with your friends via social media, so that lots of people are playing the game with you, all submitting the intimate details of their driving history as well. Let’s see who’s the best driver. Plus you can earn badges. Yay! Badges! That’s what it’s about right?

I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily give all this data to an insurance company. I mean they say it’s to make you a safer driver. Yeah, sure, that’s totally the reason. Until you apply for insurance one day and you find they know a little bit more about your driving habits than you might’ve thought and your insurance premium reflects that knowledge. If you’re a good driver, maybe you’ll pay less for you insurance. And maybe you won’t. I know which one I’m betting on.

I like to think that I’m a pretty good driver, but even with the promise of a big cash prize, to voluntarily hand over that much personal driving history data to an insurance company seems absolutely crazy to me.

Thanks AAMI, but I’ll leave this little adventure to Neil, Gaz and Loretta Jones.

Featured CC BY-NC Image “The Sunset Storm, Brisbane Australia“, by Ben Ashmole on Flickr

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Being Visible Is Hard

VisibleI was talking to a couple of people today about the way we use blogs with our students.  At my school we have a number of students and classes blogging, and every one of these blogs is completely open and visible to the public web. These folk were asking, with an obvious degree of concern, how we deal with this public visibility of student blogs and what steps were we taking to prevent them being seen by “just anyone”.

I’ve tried to convince many people to try blogging over the years. Usually, their biggest objection is “why would anyone want to read what I write?”  Their concern is usually about the huge waste of effort that blogging will be because they don’t truly believe that anybody will ever read or take any interest in what they have to write. They imagine that their work will go into the black hole of the Internet where it never gets seen by anyone.

And yet, when we talk about getting students blogging on the open web, the usual concern is just the opposite. We worry more about how we can stop “all those people out there” from seeing the student blogs. We worry that our students will be endangered by throngs of strangers seeing their writing online.

Well, which is it? Are we worried that nobody will see the things we post online, or are we worried that everybody will see the things we post online? It’s an interesting contradiction.

The truth is that the vast majority of blogs have a readership of close to zero.  Getting people to find and read your blog is hard work. It takes a lot of promotion and campaigning to get people to find and connect with a blog. And as much as I hate to say it, it’s probably even harder when that blog belongs to a school student.  We worry a lot about ‘stranger danger’ but unless a teacher actively pursues an audience for their students’ blogs, I suspect most would be lucky to get a visit from anyone beside mum and dad and a few family friends.

Despite our concerns about the perils of putting our kids online, the biggest challenge of blogging with students is not exposure, but obscurity.

Creative Commons photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andercismo/2349098787/