Examining the consequences of sharing data online

Your personal information is valuable. That’s why it’s vital that you are the one in charge of controlling how your personal information gets shared. That way, you can take steps to prevent others from tracking you, using your data in ways you don’t like, or spying on you without your knowledge or consent. This page includes steps anyone can take to make their online lives more private and secure. It also explores some of the larger ideas and debates around privacy, trust and your digital footprint.

Skills

• Identifying and taking steps to keep important elements of your identity private
• Identifying rights retained and removed through user agreements
• Explaining ways in which computer criminals are able to gain access to user information
• Managing the digital footprint of your online persona
• Taking steps to secure non-encrypted connections

Discover

See who’s tracking you online

• Watch the video. As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. This “Tracking the Trackers” TED Talk video explains how.
• Try it for yourself. Install the Lightbeam add-on to see for yourself. Shine a light on who’s watching your online activities.

“Web tracking isn’t always bad — personal data can make your browsing more personalized, and provide advertising revenue for sites you like. But it’s your right to know what data is being collected about you.”
–Mark Surman, Mozilla

Tell sites you don’t want to be tracked

Enable “Do Not Track.” You can tell sites to stop tracking your browsing history using this simple change to your browser settings. Here’s how:

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer
• Safari
• Chrome
• Opera

How to turn on private browsing

If you don’t want anyone with physical access to your computer to see what you’re doing online, you can enable “private browsing.” This deletes cookies, temporary Internet files and browsing history after you close the window.

See how much your personal data is worth to marketers

• How much buyers would pay for your information? Use this interactive calculator from the Financial Times to find out.

Adjust your social network settings

• Facebook — Click the settings cog in the upper right corner of your screen, then click  Privacy  Settings >> “Who can see my stuff.”
• Twitter — click the settings cog, then “Settings.” You can adjust settings like adding or removing your location to tweets, or make your  tweets private so that only people you approve can see them.
• Google+ — go to Home >> Settings to adjust who can interact with you, comment on your posts, or start a conversation.

Learn more about surveillance and spying

• NSA Files Decoded: What the revelations mean for you. The Guardian newspaper’s interactive exploration on what the National Security Agency is collecting about you.
• Learn more about your own meta-data. What social networks, devices and services do you use? What meta-data does that reveal about you to the NSA and others?

Learn more about the “Stop Watching Us” campaign

StopWatching.us is a coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations, companies and prominent figures speaking out against mass surveillance.

“Unwarranted  government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society.”
–Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

Thinking about your digital footprint and reputation

• Check out Abbas’s story from Common Sense Media about making conscious choices around what you share and how you represent yourself online.
• Making choices about what to post or share — sharing things online is what makes the web great. But sharing embarrassing or personal things about yourself or your friends can come back to haunt you. This short video walks you through it.
• Over-sharing, identity and respect. WNYC’s Radio Rookies interview youth and others about over-sharing, online identity, responsibility, sexism and more.

Make

Make a music video about privacy, surveillance or online freedom
Use Popcorn Maker to make a video. You could use videos you find on the web, music, pictures, animated GIFs or your own voice commentary.

• “Party at the NSA.“ Check out this  example from @keyboardkat. Then remix it to make it your own.
• Or make your own from scratch. This guide walks you through how to use Popcorn Maker for the first time.

Write about who’s tracking your online
Use Lightbeam to gather research about who’s tracking you online. Or do research about government surveillance. Then tell a story about what you’ve learned. You could publish it as a web page with Thimble, make a multimedia essay with Popcorn, or just write a blog post or tweet about it.

Host a “crypto-party” for you and your friends
There are various things you can do to make your online data more secure. Some are harder than others. If you want to take extra steps to protect your communications, here are some ways to go further.

• Install HTTPS Everywhere. A collaboration between The Tor Project and Electronic Frontier Foundation, this extension encrypts your communications to make your browsing more secure.
• Learn more about the Tor Project. If you’re more ambitious, you can use tools like Tor to defend yourself against network surveillance and traffic analysis. Here’s how to get started. Or check out The Guardian’s explanation on Tor works.
• Volunteer with Tor. Tor is a free network that relies on bandwidth donated by volunteers around the world. Want to help? This guide and video show you how.
• Host a crypto-party. Now that you’ve learned how to encrypt your data, why not help others? This “CryptoParty” guide can help. You can also add your event to Mozilla’s Maker Party to join others hosting web literacy parties around the world.

“People worldwide — like investigative journalists, human rights activists, and law enforcement — rely on Tor to help protect their privacy online. You can help them by running a Tor relay.”
–Electronic Frontier Foundation

Teach

Privacy and security teaching kit
This teaching kit provides a complete mini-course or curriculum with activities for teaching privacy and security basics.

Screen this 17-minute documentary about privacy and youth
It includes a teacher’s guide for screening the 17-minute “Our Privacy Matters” mini-documentary.

Get people talking and debating about privacy, tracking and surveillance. This “spectrogram” ice-breaker activity is designed to get people up, moving and talking about the issues.

Play “Privacy and Security Bingo”
This activity can be used as an ice-breaker or in offline settings. Share privacy concepts with a group of learners, and learn more about how others relate to their own privacy.

“Social Media the Wrong Way.” Guide learners through the process of making a terrible social media profile page, as a way to learn privacy best pratices and a bit of HTML at the same time.

How to teach online privacy when you don’t have internet access. Or in low bandwidth situations.

“Let’s turn our libraries, schools and other institutions into islands of network privacy best practices.”
–Cory Doctorow

Teaching privacy and network education in schools. Cory Doctorow’s take on how teachers and parents can teach privacy and network education the right way. And why many schools may be inadvertently sending the wrong message.

 

Get free training from Mozilla. On how to teach online privacy, security, digital citizenship and more.

Share a resource for teaching, learning or webmaking about privacy. Suggest a link to a resource, or create your own teaching kit.