Cory Doctorow On Privacy and Oversharing

slash-sa writes with a link to an opinion piece from Cory Doctorow that begins: "The European Parliament is currently involved in a wrangle over the new General Data Protection Regulation. At stake are the future rules for online privacy, data mining, big data, governmental spying (by proxy), to name a few. Hundreds of amendments and proposals are on the table, including some that speak of relaxing the rules on sharing data that has been "anonymised" (had identifying information removed) or "pseudonymised" (had identifiers replaced with pseudonyms). This is, however, a very difficult business, with researchers showing how relatively simple techniques can be used to re-identify the data in large anonymised data sets, by picking out the elements of each record that make them unique."

Comments

Cory's site (boingboing) has 7 tracking cookies

[Hadlock]

Cory's site has 7 tracking services that track you every time you logon to his site, and correlate with a multitude of sites that also track everywhere you go online. I would think if you're going to promote digital privacy, the first thing you would do is remove the four google tracking systems installed on your website.

Re:Cory's site (boingboing) has 7 tracking cookies

[CastrTroy]

I'm not sure if I would classify that as "his site". He's one of many bloggers. His site, only seems to block 2 cookies (using ghostery), and they are twitter and wordpress stats. I would classify those as at least not completely terrible. That being said, My browser reported blocking 9 things from Boing Boing. That's just a little bit crazy. It's probably one of the highest number of blocks that I've seen a "legitimate" site.

Re:Cory's site (boingboing) has 7 tracking cookies

[Jane Q. Public]

"I'm not sure if I would classify that as "his site". He's one of many bloggers. His site, only seems to block 2 cookies (using ghostery), and they are twitter and wordpress stats."

He blogs there, it's his site. There is no reason to split hairs. He is famous enough, he can blog wherever he damned well pleases, and he pleases to do it on Boing Boing. So it's "his site". Or where he chooses to blog.

Having said that, there are at least 7 javascript libraries on the site, 2 that appear on Ghostery, that are potential trackers, and some of them are definitely trackers.

And yes, hypocrisy applies here.

Re:Why?

[SuricouRaven]

A massive dataset for use in research, for one. Be that purely academic research, or statistical analysis for marketing usage.

Re:just happened

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Cool story bro!

Seriously, the only thing at all interesting in your post was the reference to your friend who got "mega busted" but you didn't even tell us what happened.

building a public personna

[anomalous cohort]

I remember when facebook got big enough that I finally decided to create an account there. Not because I wanted to share private details of my life with my friends. Because the FB audience was big enough that I felt compelled to have some representation there. What my timeline displays is what I call a public profile. Think of it as the linked in for hobbies and vacation travel. Don't publish anything that wouldn't hold up in a criminal investigation. I'm not saying lie. Remember Andy Warhol's now famous "15 minutes of fame" quote? Well, famous people need a PR manager. In today's "15 minutes of fame" world, everyone needs their own DIY PR manager. Think like a PR manager before you post.

Cory Doctrow? Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is anyone listening to this guy about anything? He's not an authority in any circle - he just curates odd content around the internet and he himself isn't all that bright.