Choose Privacy Week

May 1-7 is Choose Privacy Week, an ongoing program of the American Library Association that invites library users into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age. The Choose Privacy Week website has programming resources for libraries and includes the March 9, 2014 broadcast of "60 Minutes" which provides a good basic introduction to the activities of data brokers and how online personal data is tracked, bought, and sold without users’ knowledge. This 15-minute video is excellent (and worth sitting through the commercials!).

After you learn about how personal data is tracked, bought, and sold, you might want to follow up with tips about how you can lead a more private life online. Try the "60 Minutes Overtime" video, "How to defend your privacy online."  Skip ahead to 2:59 for some recommendations.

And don't forget about iLibrarian's 2013 post, "A quick guide to Private Browsing," which covers the Private Browsing and Do Not Track features for most popular browsers and includes "how-tos" and screenshots.

Are you concerned about your privacy in the digital age? What special steps do you take to preserve it? I have to confess, I hadn't paid too much attention to this topic in the past, but now I'm considering options like DuckDuckGo and Disconnect for more private browsing! 

More TechBits posts about privacy:

• Stopping Stealth Tracking of Your Browsing Habits (The "Do Not Track Plus" add-on for Firefox)
• On the topic of privacy (last year's post about Privacy Week with fun video and links to privacy-related resources)