Book Review: Shareveillance
Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data Clare Birchall (2017) Digital Tattoo Rating: 2/5 Summary What does it mean to share in the Digital Age? In her book Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data, Clare Birchall investigates the intricacies of digital sharing on personal and state levels, and […]
In the News: Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance: “Privacy is not Absolute”
Five Eyes (FVEY) Intelligence Alliance is a multi-national agreement for signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom [1]. This group emerged as a result of the 1943 Britain-United States of America Agreement (1943 BRUSA Agreement)[2]. Although the treaty was signed and enacted in 1943, the public was only […]
Ownership of Content in Your Digital Life – World Wide Web (Part 2)
What Do You Own on Your Website? In our previous article, we took a look at the content ownership agreements that exist between social media users and the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In short, we learned that as part of the agreement to use their services, users agree to give these companies a […]
Ownership of Content in Your Digital Life – Social Media (Part 1)
Snap, Click, Post, Like: the normal rhythm of a social media user, who uses popular social media/sharing sites to broadcast stories from their day-to-day lives to the world. Most users are content with their relationship with social sharing platforms, so long as the service is uninterrupted. Social sharing platforms allow users to share their lives, […]
How to Access Information Collected From Your Digital Accounts
Terms and Conditions – TL;DR: Take My Data Terms and conditions of use often bind users to agreements in unsuspecting ways about the use, storage, sale, transfer, and deletion of their account, data, or identity. Examples include popular software such as Twitter, which stipulates that they can profit from selling your pictures without prior […]
Social Media and Mental Health
In 2017 users spent approximately two hours a day on social media. Surprisingly, this amounts to five years and four months of a person’s life spent solely on social media [1] There have been connections made between mental health concerns and social media consumption throughout the years. What is triggering these links with mental […]
Technology companies are updating their privacy policies for their benefit, not yours
You may have noticed that a lot of companies are updating their privacy policies. It’s not a coincidence. And these major corporations haven’t suddenly begun caring about the privacy of their users; in fact, many are still profiting from exploiting the information that they collect. These companies are updating their privacy policies to protect themselves. […]
Book Review: Managing the Digital You
Managing the Digital You Melody Condron (2017) ________ Digital Tattoo Rating: 4/5 Summary I don’t know about you, but the number of files on my computer has gotten out of control. Every time I have to switch devices, or find a paper from last semester, I realize how poorly I’ve managed the data […]
The Data Detox Challenge
We all know that familiar feeling of having too much clutter; whether it’s in our physical or mental spaces, it can be hard to function efficiently when we’re weighed down by disorder. For this reason, when the Digital Tattoo student team heard about the Data Detox – an 8 day online challenge to […]
The Ethics of Algorithms
When we interact with technology, we tend to assume that our tools are neutral, unbiased machines. How can an algorithm, a mathematical sequence, be discriminatory? Those responsible for coding our online spaces, writing the algorithms that mediate our digital lives spaces necessarily, whether knowingly or unknowingly embed their worldviews and biases into our online […]
People said…