My Digital FootPrint

Customer Commons have presented a research paper:  Lying and Hiding in the Name of Privacy http://customercommons.org/2013/05/08/lying-and-hiding-in-the-name-of-privacy/ Abstract A large percentage of individuals employ artful dodges to avoid giving out requested personal information online when they believe at least some of that information is not required. These dodges include hiding personal details, intentionally submitting incorrect data, clicking away from sites or refusing to install phone applications. This suggests most people do not want to reveal more than they have to when all they want is to download apps, watch videos, shop or participate in social networking. Keywords :  privacy, personal data, control, invasion, convergence Download a   PDF of the paper here . They surveyed 1704 people showing that 92% of the people do something:  hide, lie, click away or refuse to install an app.. in order to control their data and create some kind of privacy.   I

21 years ago there was no digital footprint ideas so there is no digital trace or record, but I do have the press cutting that got me into a lot of trouble.  I had no idea back then how advanced the technology was as it seemed normal to me or how long it would take to generate adoption.   Of interest to me is that the big issue of the day was privacy ( you answer the phone and someone can see you, can they remotely switch on the camera and look round my home).  I have never appeared to escape the clutches of privacy issues. The context is; I was working at GEC Marconi on Videophones with Tom, Dave , Mark , Alvin , Rob and Andy , Andy , Les to name a few of the team.  I was at the Ideal Home exhibition in London and on the BT stand and launching the Videophone. The Relate 2000 videophone was the first one BT made commercially. It promised callers the chance to see, and be seen by, the person they were talking to. It featured a flip-up screen on the right, where the video

Image. It is an algorithm: globalimaging.com/images/modis-atmos.jpg Algorithms     are the foundation of your computing interactions. An algorithm is the means by which a computer program can make decisions about you, for you, or decisions that affect you.  Algorithms are the translation of what you do into rules and policies that a computer understands (i.e. 0s and 1s). Like it or not, you are influenced by them as much as you influence them. Algorithms need data, they use digital data that you give, leave or have tracked about you (willingly or not).  This input into an algorithm is your digital footprint, which comes from Facebook, Twitter, text messages, email, key stokes, swipes, gestures, play lists, payment records, your routes, navigation – indeed anything you do which is an interaction with an electronic device. This is the basis of what an algorithm knows about you. It is how an algorithm can model you, it takes input and predicates based on what you have done and

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Catholic University of Louvain studied 15 months' worth of anonymised mobile phone records for 1.5 million individuals. Here's  the full study. With no real surprise they found from the "mobility traces" - the evident paths of each mobile phone - that only four locations and times were enough to identify a particular user. We are predictable and so Dan Ariely Work comes true.  In their own words “ They studied fifteen months of human mobility data for one and a half million individuals and find that human mobility traces are highly unique. In fact, in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly, and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the carrier's antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals. We coarsen the data spatially and temporally to find a formula for the uniqueness of human mobility traces given their resol

Source : http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/plan-your-digital-afterlife-with.html Google has presented a new product that plans your digital afterlife – think Digital Will or Death Switch – you can instruct Google to delete your personal data and transfer your files to designated recipients, if you want them preserved for posterity. This is a class of service called managing your data after death that has been talked about a lot on My Digital Footprint. It is interesting that one of the largest players has done something about it and does highlight the importance of managing digital assets after death and is an attempt to solve a real (perceived) problem.  There is a host of companies ( Legacy Locker , Cirrus , Death Switch , Perpetu , AfterSteps ,   The Digital Beyond   DadApp , Social Safe to name a just a few) who are willing to charge you for this service and given that this is Google only data, you still need something for all your other services and digi

Paris Brown  (17) was the UK's first youth police and crime commissioner and last week tweets dating back three years made her appear racist, homophobic and supportive of the drug culture.   As Paris has since recognised that even though teenagers have been brought up with digital media all around them and it is second nature to share instant snippets of their lives with their immediate peer network, it is rather difficult to remember that all your online activity is stored somewhere and can be found very easily. Context is often lost, but the words are not. However, what we often forget is that your digital footprint is made up of what you say and what others say about you.  This blog is not only part of Paris’ Digital Footprint but also mine.

The basics are that Facebook searches your " social graph " because it has your and your friends specific "Likes, pages, click, links, connections and conversations" The result is that searching should produce more relevant results thank Google's "Whole World Wide Web".  In other words it feeds you what you have fed it. The signals; your and your friends "Likes" are a somewhat limited data set -  it is not everything you do on the web and does not represent what others do.  However, Google sells search and Facebook also now sells search - in fact since you Like it Facebook can sell (advertise to you) you what you Like and with that Signal increase the advertising margin (hope) when it sells the placement. Simple - tell you what you tell me because you Like it. What Facebook needs to do is add more data as real social graph results as the current one is rather limited ----   http://actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com/ It essence is

The Value of our Digital Identity report recently published by   Boston Consulting Group , based on a new empirical consumer research, offers a new perspective. The most important takeaway from this research is that it quantifies the current and potential economic value of digital identity: "The report shows that the value created through digital identity can indeed be massive: €1 trillion in Europe by 2020, or roughly 8 percent of the combined GDP of the EU-27. For European businesses and governments, the use of personal data will deliver an annual benefit of €330 billion by 2020—bringing growth to an otherwise stagnant economy. For individuals, the value will be more than twice as large: €670 billion. Much of that will be due to online services such as Facebook and Google that can be offered free of charge—thanks to business models that monetize personal data—yet are highly valued by consumers"

The   World Economic Forum  has published its 3rd report on personal data: Rethinking Personal Data:   Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage . The other reports are on the WED site Rethinking Personal Data   The report says we must solve simplicity and elegance of design for usability so people can see the data generated by and about them. The last part of the executive summary calls for "stakeholders to more effectively understand the dynamics of how the personal data ecosystem operates. A better coordinated way to share learning, shorten feedback loops and improve evidence-based policy-making must be established." The second chapter covers the context of data use, where everything surrounding data use affects people's privacy expectations and the choices of institutions using their data. It's great seeing this level of nuance brought to a general business audience. This report is notable for highlighting the role of the   persona

Would you believe it ….Your digital footprint says a lot more about you than you think ! Researchers at Cambridge University ( study press release ) published at http://www.pnas.org/ distilled Facebook data to predict some personality traits or behaviours such as “sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age and gender.”  Well if you give off the signals (links, likes, pages) it is quite easy to determine…. The analysis is based on 58,000 volunteers who offered to share their Facebook “likes.” Using the information gleaned from Facebook, the researchers were able to accurately tell a man’s sexual orientation 88 percent of the time, whether they were white or African-American 95 percent of the time, and whether they were a Democrat or Republican 85 percent of the time. Even religious affiliation, specifically determining if a person was Christian or Muslim, was pr

This is a screen shot from the old blog when on the Posterous platform as a reminder of the nearly 400,000 views.

Interview  by  Julian Blake  for TechCity Insider All you need is trust from TechCityInsider on Vimeo .

Identifiers = Outer layer is identity given to you by someone else My Data = Layer of identity that I generate myself Security Wrap = the layer that protects what I want protected The Gap is the missing layer between what I want  - a unique ID, so I have the ability to say I am who I am and I am the only person who can be me.

Hyperthymesia / Hyperthymesia  is a neurological condition that bestows near-perfect recall on those who are afflicted with it. One of the most famous hyperthymesia cases is  Jill Price , a 45 year old school administrator from California. She is able to remember everything that happened to her from 1980 onwards, everything. Huffington Post writes about this case and the condition as do others in cases from the Daily Mail the Telegraph and the BBC   Like Eidetic memory , Hyperthymesia has some really impressive quality but some unpleasant downsides – especially reliving the daily grind, embarrassing situations and other times which you would prefer to forget.   There is a fascinating article Why Women Recall Emotional Events Better Than Men Do which continues the theme about some people’s ability to remember different things and the ability to recall them. One rule (of 33 so far documented ) of the living in a digital age is that the internet is written in ink and has “total recal

Source : http://www.nickmilton.com/2011/07/experience-management-continued.html So you are out shopping (in store or online) and you buy a product – is that an experience that matters and how should the data be collected/ recorded? You get home and find that the goods are faulty or they arrive faulty - is that an experience that matters and how should the data be collected/ recorded? You call the retailer and sort something out - is that an experience that matters and how should the data be collected/ recorded? The customer experience team converted it from disappointment to delight - is that an experience that matters and how should the data be collected/ recorded? Three months later – which one do you remember and which one (ones) does your digital footprint remember and how do you know you have all the data for building experience?

A while ago I wrote Who Am I cost of Value…. http://www.mydigitalfootprint.com/who-am-i-cost-or-value-diagram Just updating this summary : a lot of cost

Just a thought  - probably yes.

  Image source: globalimaging.com/images/modis-atmos.jpg     I have written nearly 30 posts about Algorithms as they are the foundation of your computing interactions and you are influenced by them. The data that you leave (willingly or not), is your digital footprint and is the basis of what an algorithm knows about you and how you can be modelled to a known data set. Data about you generated by others helps refine and confirm how well I have been able to model you and your preferences. An algorithm is, according to Wikipedia, is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for  calculation ,  data processing , and  automated reasoning .   A starting point is Dan Ariely’s work, ( Truth , Predictably Irrational , Behaviour , Desire Engines ) – from this direction you will conclude that we are creatures of habit and habits can be modelled and coded into an algorithm.  Therefore you are not as irrational as you think and it is possible with a degree of probability to