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"What does privacy mean in an age of ongoing privacy breaches? With new privacy law coming online in Australia on March 12, our Privacy in Practice series explores the practical challenges facing Australian business and consumers in a world rethinking privacy."

"What does privacy mean in an age of ongoing privacy breaches? With new privacy law coming online in Australia on March 12, our Privacy in Practice series explores the practical challenges facing Australian business and consumers in a world rethinking privacy."

"Privacy issues are a very hot topic for anyone using social media. As educators, I believe it is our responsibility to teach our students the ins and outs of how to responsibly use social media. ...... I believe social media is important for educators and students. But I also believe it must be used responsibly and that cannot be accomplished without knowing the intricacies of social media privacy. Take a look at this infographic from MDG about the sad state of social media privacy."

"If you've ever visited a website that handles even the smallest bit of your personal information, there's a good chance (hopefully) that it's asked you to read through a privacy policy or two. Rather than pour over the details, many of us simply click on 'I AGREE!' and proceed with using the application. Even the companies and websites involved understand this and make it as easy as possible to satisfy lawyers as well as users. What's the harm in essentially ignoring that privacy policy? While the majority of the time it's harmless, there are some ne'er-do-wells that may gather your personal information and sell it to marketers, advertisers, or spammers. While terrible, it's not unheard of."

"By now, we know that social media behavior differs, based on factors like gender, age and nationality. It turns out, how you manage your social media privacy may depend on similar indicators. ZoneAlarm created the below infographic, based on a 2012 study by Pew. The research points to gender-specific privacy practices. For instance, men are nearly twice as likely as women to profess regret for posting online content. On the other hand, men are more likely to maintain public social media presences."

"The track record of commercial products designed with privacy as a top priority has been abysmal - at least until recently. The ephemeral texting app Snapchat is turning assumptions upside down about young people and their desire for digital privacy."

"Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web.  If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser.  To the advertiser, it's like you suddenly disappeared."

"It's common for Facebook to undergo drastic (or silent) changes whether the users like it or not. The real question is, how ready are you when Facebook is determined to 'make the world more open and connected'? Have you made full use of the privacy and account settings to your advantage? Also, if you've been observant enough you should've discovered several improvements on the existing features to make them more visible and user friendly. Why not give this list a run-through and see if you missed any."

Alex Hern unpacks the irony encoded within Facebook's ever evolving privacy settings. Another reminder why we need to be ever so vigilant about Facebook and every social media platform for that matter. Facebook can truthfully say that it does what it promises, and even offers settings that let people lock-down their own accounts, while designing the site so even internet-savvy users like me will end up exposing information we never intended to make public.

"LIKE it or not, your relationship with Google is becoming a lot more intimate. The company recently expanded its ability to combine data from its various services to create a highly detailed profile on you. Google says it's doing that to simplify its privacy policy and improve your experience on sites such as Gmail, Picasa, Google Plus and YouTube. But there's a business reason, too. Google gets a chance to use the data it collects to tailor ads that align more precisely with your interests, and those personalised ads are among the most lucrative for the company. Before getting too worked up, it's important to understand what's happening.

"Google does let you opt out, and every Gmail user will get an email from the company notifying them and pointing them to the privacy settings when the feature goes live. Here's what those privacy settings look like:"

"The growing privacy industry isn't changing the fact that most people are products sold to advertisers - it's just changing the way they are sold."

"Privacy on the Internet - some thoughts on issues and tools that you can use to keep your data private."

Interesting article to read about the future of data and data privacy

There are roughly 792 mobile apps downloaded each second. As a result, more and more services are taking to mobile in an effort to capitalize on this trend. That also means location-based capabilities and features are being integrated into many apps, whether users know it or not. You may be someone who takes personal and digital privacy matters very seriously, or you might be more relaxed about your digital information. Either way, there are four types of settings users can check to determine how much information they make available to the world.

"Data Dealer is an online game about collecting and selling personal data - full of irony and gleeful sarcasm. It´s a browser/serious/edu/impact game about digital culture and surveillance and aims to raise awareness about online privacy in a new and fun way. The English version was released in May 2013. Let's call it a bastard offspring of certain shiny 2010 Facebook Games and the 1990 TV simulation game Mad TV, reborn with the souls of South Park and Bruce Schneier. And it´s also available on Facebook! Oh, the irony. In today´s digital age virtually everything we do is recorded, monitored or tracked in some way: Data Dealer is a unique interactive exploration of this personal data ecosystem."

Many campuses have decided to outsource email and other services to "cloud" providers. Berkeley has joined in by migrating student and faculty to bMail, operated by Google. In doing so, it has raised some anxiety about privacy and autonomy in communications. In this post, I outline some advantages of our outsourcing to Google, some disadvantages, and how we might improve upon our IT outsourcing strategy, especially for sensitive or especially valuable materials.

Many of our staff have access to iPads and are keen to use these as part of their teaching. Some are exploring the use of Google Docs, some are exploring the Ultranet and some are exploring other options. The question of privacy and security of information was raised with regards to access to information that is stored within 'the cloud'. This lead to me completing a bit of an investigation of DEECD and Victorian Government policies on where we stand with regards to storing information online using Google Docs, Evernote and other web based applications.