What is the thesis about?

Hypothesis:
Privacy can co-exist with today’s technology, providing a privacy lifestyle is chosen.

**Grades Update**

Masters in Computer Security – Distinction

BSc (Hons) Information Security – First

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Schneier believes that “data collectors” are one of the three emerging cyber threats – and the one that can do you most harm.  What does he mean “harm”?  Lets explain this.  Did you know that the EU found, a quarter of all job applicants are rejected without an interview, after an employer checked their Facebook profile? (Source: EU Data Protection Day).

So these potential employees were effectively blacklisted, simply due to their facebook profile.  You see Privacy is about context… what you say to friends, is not how you would speak to your employer.

Social media sites resell this data to Insurance companies. Your correspondence will be resold many times, and aggregated to gain a microscopic profile of your life.  This now becomes politically charged, as this same information could blacklist you from medical insurance or employment.  Technically it’s classed as “marketing data” which has little to no Data Protection.   So what can you do?

The solution to “Big Data” is to stop data collection by using special privacy tools such as http://www.startpage.com or http://www.ivpn.net.

 

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Search Engines – Step 1 of Privacy

Make sure that your search engines that NEVER record your IP (like http://www.startpage.com or http://www.duckduckgo.com).

Your local council, divorce lawyer, tax office can all retrieve search queries from engines like Google and Bing.  Never use Google or Bing, for your own protection – this is a MANDATORY step.

VPN’s – Check they keep no server logs – Step 2 of Privacy

If you select a VPN ensure they do not keep server logs, check out the torrentfreak reviews on anonymity, or use the awesome IVPN.

www.ivpn.net

So please.  Use privacy tools to prohibit data collection.

As Schneier commented… Data Collection is a bigger issue than Cyber Warfare.

Data collection is NOT innocent. Check out this US Senate Report.

‘Data brokers’ selling personal info of rape victims to marketers – report

“There are consumer list brokers that sell lists of individually identifiable consumers grouped by characteristics. To our knowledge, it is not practically possible for an individual to find out if he or she is on these lists,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, in her testimony. “If a consumer learns that he or she is on a list, there is usually no way to get off the list.”

Dixon named one broker, MEDbase200, that has auctioned off lists of rape and domestic violence victims.

Upon questioning from the Wall Street Journal, MEDbase200 also nixed lists of HIV/AIDS patients and “peer pressure sufferers” that were for sale.

The committee found another, Epsilon, that offered at least one list of people who allegedly have medical conditions including anxiety, depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, insomnia, and osteoporosis.

‘Data brokers’ selling personal info of rape victims to marketers – report

Should sensitive data be classified as “marketing data”. Having cancer or diabetes, is someone’s life we’re talking about.  Once this data has been taken, it will be resold, without your knowledge or consent, and may harm you.

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