Hidden Online Surveillance: What Librarians Should Know to Protect Their Own Privacy and That of Their Patrons

Fortier, Alexandre; Burkell, Jacquelyn

doi:10.6017/ital.v34i3.5495

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…Magi (2013) urges that librarians educate their users about these pitfalls so that they can make “informed choices” and that libraries keep circulation and research profile information in house as far as possible (p. 39; see also Fortier and Burkell, 2015). This is all very well, but will it matter?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy, obfuscation, and propertization

Doyle

2018

IFLA Journal

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As our digital wake ripples out, big data is standing by to ride it, applying its analytics to make unnerving inferences about our characters, preferences, and future behavior. This paper addresses the challenge that big data presents to privacy. I examine what are perhaps the two most promising attempts to repel big data’s attack on privacy: obfuscation and the “propertization” of personal information. Obfuscation attempts to throw data collectors off our digital trail by confusing or misleading them. Propertization calls for treating personal information as intellectual property and would require that data holders compensate data subjects for any secondary use. I try to show that both defenses largely fail. I conclude that privacy is a lost cause and that we should call off the attempts to defend it from the moral point of view. I close with some thoughts about what this all means for libraries.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy, obfuscation, and propertization

Doyle

2018

IFLA Journal

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“…To this end, we have several recommendations. First, information professionals should educate themselves with respect to behavioural tracking mechanisms and the measures that can be taken to identify and even block behavioural tracking . Second, armed with this information and appropriate tools, information professionals should assess the behavioural tracking practices of the consumer health websites they recommend.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, however, websites and associated advertisers have increased their use of behavioural tracking using tools such as HTTP cookies, Web beacons and Flash cookies. These mechanisms collect non‐personally identifying information such as IP address, browser configuration information and details of browsing behaviour . Information is often integrated across multiple visits to a website and even across visits to different websites to assemble a detailed profile of online activities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Could we do better? Behavioural tracking on recommended consumer health websites

Burkell

Fortier

2015

Health Info Libraries J

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“…However, though significant effort has been focused on librarian education around privacy-protection technology tools (e.g. Fortier and Burkell, 2015; Noh, 2014), relatively little work in the information science field has looked directly at the barriers and issues surrounding users’ adoption and use of such tools. These challenges have the potential to lessen the impact of librarians’ work in educating and encouraging patrons in using privacy-related technologies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Complementing the formal training opportunities in this area for librarians and library staff, numerous pragmatic guides to privacy threats, protective actions and relevant technology tools exist, both in the research literature (e.g. Fortier and Burkell, 2015) and in web-based resources (such as the Library Freedom Project's (2018) "Privacy toolkit for librarians"). The American Library Association (ALA) provides a wealth of privacy-related guidelines, checklists, and toolkits for library staff and librarians (ALA, 2014(ALA, , 2016.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encouraging patron adoption of privacy-protection technologies:

Maceli

2018

IFLA Journal

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Threats to our patrons’ privacy have been a long-standing concern in libraries, though our responsibilities were largely bounded by the physical library space. Today, fueled by novel technologies, the landscape is vastly different, with patrons’ privacy threatened by an ever-increasing number of entities. In this complexity, libraries have continued their commitment to privacy, with public libraries now seeking to educate patrons about privacy threats, protective measures, and tools that they might employ. This review of literature seeks to identify challenges to United States public libraries in educating and advocating for patron use of privacy-protection technology tools, drawing from research in a variety of allied fields, while suggesting future research directions. Issues identified include: substantial technology-related knowledge gaps in our patrons, librarians, and library staff; the need to support a vast number of technology tools and techniques; as well as building our understanding of the perspective of the tools’ underlying creators.

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Hidden Online Surveillance: What Librarians Should Know to Protect Their Own Privacy and That of Their Patrons

Abstract: ABSTRACT

Cited by 12 publications

References 11 publications

Privacy, obfuscation, and propertization

Privacy, obfuscation, and propertization

Could we do better? Behavioural tracking on recommended consumer health websites

Encouraging patron adoption of privacy-protection technologies:

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