Jul 15, 2011

Jen King Discusses Internet Privacy, in the San Jose Mercury News

From the San Jose Mercury News

Can you regain control of your online identity?

By Sue McAllister

Every time you're online, marketers, game developers and search engines are trying to suck up as much information about you as they can. And they hope to use that information to make lots of money off you someday.

But with data breaches and self-inflicted privacy gaffes -- former Rep. Anthony Weiner, what were you thinking? -- becoming a more common occurrence, more people are fighting back against the invasiveness of some technologies and are trying to wrangle their digital identities back under their control.

They're finding that there are worthwhile steps to take, but no single solution to control the staggering amount of personal information out there on the Internet....

Jen King, a Ph.D. student at [the School of Information at] UC Berkeley who studies online privacy, said consumers should not consider networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook to be neutral conduits. "These are companies that make a profit, and you have to be aware of that when you think of how much information you want to give them."...

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016