Blog Posts Tagged with Personal harms

Your mobile phone account could be hijacked by an identity thief

A few weeks ago an unknown person walked into a mobile phone store, claimed to be me, asked to upgrade my mobile phones, and walked out with two brand new iPhones assigned to my telephone numbers. My phones immediately stopped receiving calls, and I was left with a large bill and the anxiety and fear of financial injury that spring from identity theft.

Open Police Data Re-identification Risks

Last week I spoke at a White House event “Opportunities & Challenges: Open Police Data and Ensuring the Safety and Security of Victims of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault.” This event brought together representatives from government agencies, police departments, and advocacy groups to discuss the potential safety and privacy impact of open police data initiatives.

Transparency establishes trust

We are amidst an era of open data –a period in which we share details of our personal lives widely in exchange for all kinds of services, often trusting companies with our most intimate facts. Sharing information about our personal lives has fostered technological innovations and influenced more transparency in government (e.g., [1,2]) and in science (e.g., [3,4]). However, once personal data are acquired, it may be shared with others without consumer awareness. So how might we add transparency to data sharing? The goal of this blog is to spark discussion and debate.