{"id":205,"date":"2017-05-02T19:01:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T18:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/?p=205"},"modified":"2017-05-02T19:02:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T18:02:32","slug":"privacy-or-the-lack-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/2017\/05\/02\/privacy-or-the-lack-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy or the lack of it?!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-214 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2017\/05\/twitter-292994_1920-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"twitter-292994_1920\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2017\/05\/twitter-292994_1920-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2017\/05\/twitter-292994_1920-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2017\/05\/twitter-292994_1920-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2017\/05\/twitter-292994_1920-330x220.jpg 330w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2017\/05\/twitter-292994_1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Privacy and mass surveillance are one of the biggest issues that have emerged (RIFON, N. J., LaROSE, R. and CHOI, S. M. ,\u00a02005), with the rise of densely connected digital world and specifically social media platforms gathering personal data with user&#8217;s own consent.<\/p>\n<p>The balance between state surveillance for safety and personal privacy is a tricky mission to accomplish: s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnsglobal.com\/sites\/default\/files\/whitepaper\/TNSUK_POM_2014Feb03.pdf\">tudies show that public<\/a> opinion splits into those who agree that it is ok to collect data for national security and others highly disagree. There is a strong debate going on about what is appropriate in terms of interfering with personal data environment.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wiretaps, data dumps and zero days: is digital privacy no longer possible?\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L4HuSNRg5og?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\">Video 1. Wiretaps, data dumps and zero days: is digital privacy no longer possible?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zero-day_(computing)\">Zero-day vulnerability<\/a>\u00a0is another big issue, that is why we take our testing and deployment very seriously. That said, there are always risks associated with any digital product: software engineers are humans and cannot foresee all the gaps in the code, so hackers might be successful\u00a0in finding the backdoor even in the best of products.<\/p>\n<p>Also, we realise that consumers attitude towards privacy on the web can be controversial, whereas Privacy fundamentalists are roughly 25% of the represented sample with the rest being deliberately\u00a0neglectful or ignorant of the way their data is being used by online services (P. Kumaraguru and L. F. Cranor, 2005). Millenials\u00a0(our target audience) deliberately trade off their personal data to build up their digital identity and gain some value in return. They have not as much concern about disclosing their information as with having a chance to control that disclosure with certain privacy settings.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, we believe that privacy in the modern age is the essential public good which has to be protected no matter how difficult and technically challenging that is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prevention and Transparency<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are two ways that privacy issue can be dealt with: Prevention of personal data being available to third parties and Transparency\u00a0of how data is being used. As we have talked in previous posts, in terms of transparency we are determined to protect personal data under current legislation and also provide clear consent forms to our users stating in simple terms what will be done to their data (analogy with Creative Commons human-readable layer of the license agreement). We will respond to government data requests similarly to<a href=\"https:\/\/govtrequests.facebook.com\/country\/Belgium\/2016-H2\/\"> Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and will provide transparent statistics for any user to look up.<\/p>\n<p>As for the Prevention, we will use end-to-end encryption models for the messages being transmitted through our app. We will try to overcome the issue of offline messages being reassigned with another key which gives a loophole for hacking. Our team will not pronounce it as a feature of the app like in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2017\/jan\/13\/whatsapp-backdoor-allows-snooping-on-encrypted-messages\">Whatsapp case<\/a>, but we will treat it as a bug\u00a0which needs a fix.<\/p>\n<p>By transparency and data protection policy combined with straightforward agenda, we provide the context for our users to consider and make a\u00a0weighted decision\u00a0regarding their personal data sharing.<\/p>\n<p>References:<\/p>\n<p>P. Kumaraguru and L. F. Cranor. Privacy indexes: A Survey of Westin\u2019s Studies. Technical report, Institute for Software Research International, Carnegie Mellon University, December 2005<\/p>\n<p>RIFON, N. J., LaROSE, R. and CHOI, S. M. (2005), Your Privacy Is Sealed: Effects of Web Privacy Seals on Trust and Personal Disclosures. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 39: 339\u2013362. doi:10.1111\/j.1745-6606.2005.00018.x<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Privacy and mass surveillance are one of the biggest issues that have emerged (RIFON, N. J., LaROSE, R. and CHOI, S. M. ,\u00a02005), with the rise of densely connected digital world and specifically social media platforms gathering personal data with user&#8217;s own consent. The balance between state surveillance for safety and personal privacy is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[22,56,57],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-privacy","tag-data","tag-privacy","tag-surveillance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/gapapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}