Link tags: privacy
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Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide? - Charlie’s Diary
Recall undermines trust, and once an institution loses trust it’s really hard to regain it.
Manifesto for a Humane Web
I endorse this message.
This manifesto is intended as a personal response to the current state of the web. It is a statement of intent and a call to arms, inviting you, the reader, to go forth and build humane websites, and to resist the erosion of the web we know and love.
The environmental benefits of privacy-focussed web design - Root Web Design Studio
Even the smallest of business websites now seems to have cookie popups simultaneously telling us they ‘value your privacy’ while harvesting data about who we are, where we are, what we’re looking for and what we were doing online before we landed there.
Tracking scripts have become so pervasive that they have effectively become an industry standard, and most businesses deploy them not only without question, but without consideration of what it means for customer privacy.
Counting Ghosts
Analytics serves as a proxy for understanding people, a crutch we lean into. Until eventually, instead of solving problems, we are just sitting at our computer counting ghosts.
This article is spot-on!
I don’t want your data – Manu
I don’t run analytics on this website. I don’t care which articles you read, I don’t care if you read them. I don’t care about which post is the most read or the most clicked. I don’t A/B test, I don’t try to overthink my content.
Same!
Our Maps Don’t Know Where You Are – The Markup
I wish more publishers and services took this approach to evaluating technology:
We scrutinize third-party services before including them in our articles or elsewhere on our site. Many include trackers or analytics that would collect data on our readers. These may be standard across much of the web, but we don’t use them.
Podcast Standards Project | Advocating for open podcasting
A new organisation with the stated goal of keeping podcasting open.
Their first specification is a consolidation of what already exists. That’s good. We don’t want a 927 situation.
My only worry is that many of the companies behind this initiative are focused on metrics and monetization—I hope they don’t attempt to standardise tracking and surveillance in podcasts.
The Podcast Standards Project, a grassroots coalition working to establish modern, open standards, to enable innovation in the podcast industry.
Define “innovation”.
Learn Privacy
Stuart has written this fantastic concise practical guide to privacy for developers and designers. A must-read!
Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought - Bitestring’s Blog
How browser fingerprinting works and what you can do about it (if you use Firefox).
Privacy in the product design lifecycle | ICO
A very handy guide to considering privacy at all stages of digital product design:
This guidance is written for technology professionals such as product and UX designers, software engineers, QA testers, and product managers.
Privacy, Seriously | ICO
This looks like an excellent—and free!—online event centred on privacy and safety. It’s got Eva PenzeyMoog, Robin Berjon and more!
No To Spy Pixels
Almost no-one has given informed constent to being tracked through spy pixels in emails, and yet the practice is endemic. This is wrong. It needs to change.
W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles (slides)
The slides from Tess’s presentation on the W3C’s ethical web principles—there’s a transcript too.
Why your website should work without Javascript. | endtimes.dev
The obvious answer to why you should build a website that doesn’t need
jsis… because some people don’t usejs. But how many?!
How normal am I?
A fascinating interactive journey through biometrics using your face.
Contra Chrome
I remember when Google Chrome launched. I still have a physical copy of the Scott McCloud explanatory comic knocking around somewhere. Now that comic has been remixed by Leah Elliott to explain how Google Chrome is undermining privacy online.
Laying bare the inner workings of the controversial browser, she creates the ultimate guide to one of the world‘s most widely used surveillance tools.
Ban Online Behavioral Advertising | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Targeted advertising based on online behavior doesn’t just hurt privacy. It also contributes to a range of other harms.
I very much agree with this call to action from the EFF.
Maybe we can finally get away from the ludicrious idea that behavioural advertising is the only possible form of effective advertising. It’s simply not true.
Is Momentum Shifting Toward a Ban on Behavioral Advertising? – The Markup
I really hope that Betteridge’s Law doesn’t apply to this headline.
Ban embed codes
Prompted by my article on third-party code, here’s a recommendation to ditch any embeds on your website.