MichaelZimmer.org

Recently I noticed what appears to be some kind of bug — and potentially major privacy concern — on Facebook’s feed and ticker features. Let me explain the scenario: For a moderate amount of time, I had been a “friend” with someone on Facebook, and we appeared to have full visibility of each others activities. [...]

With generous support from the Open Society Foundation, I’ve been working with the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom to help assess privacy attitudes and practices of librarians and related information professionals, and we just launched our first survey for librarians.

Along with Daniel Nagel and Matthias Rath, I am co-editing a special issue of the International Review of Information Ethics on the topic of “Ethics of Secrecy”. The full call for papers is below, and available here. Abstract submission deadline is January 15, 2012. Ethics of Secrecy Call for Papers for Vol. 17 (07/2012) Deadline [...]

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an article featuring my critique of the privacy protections and research methods related to the “Taste, Ties, and Time” (T3) Facebook research study conducted by a set of Harvard sociologists. Written by Marc Parry, the article is not-so-subtly teased as “Harvard’s Privacy Meltdown” on the Chronicle’s front page, [...]

A few months ago Mozilla released Firefox 4, which featured an important “Do Not Track” function which informs websites and advertisers whether you wish to have your activity monitored and collected for behavioral targeting purposes. The problem, however, was that Firefox essentially buried the option, forcing users to stumble upon it on the “Advanced” tab [...]

In preparation for Choose Privacy Week,  the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom and American Libraries magazine hosted a webinar today, featuring the following panel of contributors: Angela Maycock, assistant director, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom Michael Zimmer, PhD, assistant professor, School of Information Studies [...]

In December 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed Twitter for information on several people associated with WikiLeaks, seeking the users’ full contact details (phone numbers and addresses), account payment method if any (credit card and bank account number), IP addresses used to access the account, connection records (“records of session times and durations”) and [...]

Mozilla has released Firefox version 4, featuring a new look and feel (Chrome, anyone?), and new privacy and security features. The feature with the most potential — and the most buzz — is “Do Not Track,” which “lets you tell websites you don’t want your browsing behavior tracked.” This is an important step towards giving [...]

A number of years ago, Daniel Howe and Helen Nissenbaum at New York University developed and released TrackMeNot, a lightweight Firefox browser extension that protects users against search data profiling by issuing randomized queries to popular search-engines with fake data. TrackMeNot obscures users’ actual search trails in a cloud of ‘ghost’ queries, significantly increasing the [...]

On February 24th, the 4th Street Forum, a nonpartisan, moderated discussion program broadcast twice weekly by Milwaukee Public Television, is taping a show on “Privacy: Checking You Out”, where I’ll be a member of the expert panel. If you’re near Milwaukee, please come join the audience. Details below. 4th STREET FORUM at MILWAUKEE TURNER HALL [...]