samantha summers
The Digital Tattoo Guide to Remote Communication
As the world becomes more accustomed to working remotely and from home, it occurred to us here at the Digital Tattoo that we are something like experts in the area of making workplace magic happen from afar. Since our establishment in 2009, our team has worked together while split between Vancouver and Toronto. With all […]
The Perils of a Digital Student Identity (and How to Cope)
Once upon a time, online courses were a novelty. A department might have offered one online course per year, or perhaps a professor might have decided to offer sessions online when they couldn’t be present in-person. In any case, they were rare, and the majority of students at Canadian universities went their whole lives without […]
Why I’m Using More Social Media than Ever
Now that quarantine has been going on for over three months, we at Digital Tattoo thought it would be a good idea to look back over the past few weeks and take stock of how quarantine has impacted our digital identities. For me, this has meant increasing my use of social media almost exponentially. Not […]
How to say “no” when asked for your contact information by a store clerk
These days, it’s almost impossible to go shopping without giving up your phone number or email address. With efforts to eliminate contact during COVID-19, this usually involves having to call them out to the hearing of everyone in the store. We know that it can be difficult to refuse in the polite Canadian climate, so […]
Contact tracing apps: How much data do you need to save the world?
Contact tracing refers to the tracking of the spread of a condition during a pandemic outbreak by keeping tabs on who has the condition and with whom they have come in contact. Historically, this required that affected individuals contact everyone with whom they interacted over a period of time, and all of those people contacting […]
The more things change…
Recently I have been reflecting on how approaches to Internet safety have changed since I was a child in the 90s and early 00s. Back then, it was all Neopets and games on the Disney channel website. In later years (the mid 2000s), my classmates all flocked to personal blogging websites like MySpace, and all […]
Book Review: Cybersecurity is Everybody’s Business
Cybersecurity is Everybody’s Business: Solve the Security Puzzle for Your Small Business and Home Scott N. Schober, with Craig Schober (2019) Digital Tattoo Rating: 4/5 1 2 3 4 5 Leave it on the shelf Give it a skim An informative read Would give to a friend A must read!!! Cybersecurity is Everybody’s […]
Zooming Into Remote Working
To quote every single email I have both sent and received in the past month, we are living in strange times. Many workplaces, schools, and friend groups have had their regular activities disrupted, and human contact is (temporarily) no longer an option. With nowhere else to go, the world has turned online. While there are […]
Time for TikTok? Security issues and the meteoric rise of TikTok
After its launch in 2017, video-sharing app TikTok has become one of the world’s most popular apps. Filling the cultural void left by the fall of Vine in 2016, it became beloved by teenagers all over the world almost overnight. Developed by Chinese company ByteDance, the app allows users to upload videos only a few […]
Freedom of Information as Activism
Bryan Short, a former contributor to the Digital Tattoo, spent the last year working for the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (F.I.P.A.). During Right to Know Week this year, the UBC iSchool hosted F.I.P.A. for an introductory workshop that teaches the fundamentals of requesting records from public bodies. In this blog post, Bryan […]
People said…