Privacy in the Age of Big Data: Recognizing Threats, Defending Your Rights, and Protecting Your Family

By Theresa Payton and Ted Claypoole

Digital data collection and surveillance gets more pervasive and invasive by the day; but the best ways to protect yourself and your data are all steps you can take yourself. Digital devices make our lives easier, with just-in-time coupons, directions, and connection with loved ones while stuck on an airplane runway. Yet, these devices, though we love them, invade our privacy in ways we might not even be aware of. Our devices send and collect data about us whenever we use them, but that data is not safeguarded the way we assume it would be.

Privacy is complex and personal. Many of us do not know the full extent to which data is collected, stored, aggregated, and used. As recent revelations indicate, we are subject to a level of data collection and surveillance never before imaginable. While some of these methods may, in fact, protect us and provide us with information and services we deem to be helpful and desired, others can turn out to be insidious and over-arching.
Privacy in the Age of Big Data highlights the many positive outcomes of digital surveillance and data collection while also outlining those forms of data collection to which we may not consent, and of which we are likely unaware. Payton and Claypoole skillfully introduce readers to the many ways we are ‘watched,’ and how to adjust our behaviors and activities to recapture our privacy. The authors suggest the tools, behavior changes, and political actions we can take to regain data and identity security. Anyone who uses digital devices will want to read this book for its clear and no-nonsense approach to the world of big data and what it means for all of us.

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Raising Cyberethical Kids: How a Family Acceptable Use Policy Can Help

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By Frederick S. Lane

In an era when 2-year-olds routinely use iPads and nearly every high school student carries a cell phone, the need to teach our children cyberethics has never been greater. In "Raising Cyberethical Kids," author and attorney Frederick S. Lane explains how a Family Acceptable Use Policy can reinforce your household values and educate your children on how to avoid the risks of online misbehavior.

As virtually every parent realizes, the combination of electronic devices and the Internet has proven nearly irresistible to children of every age. Increasingly, however, parents are wakening to the fact that those same wonderful resources can pose significant risks to the academic and professional careers of their children. In some extreme instances, online misbehavior can even result in civil litigation or criminal prosecution.

Raising Cyberethical Kids will be available from other major outlets (Amazon, B&N, Sony, etc.) in the next two weeks. If you can't wait - you can download it for only $4.99.  Click here!

Cybertraps for the Young

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By Frederick S. Lane

We teach knife and appliance safety in home economics; we teach gun safety as a prerequisite for a hunting license; auto safety in driver’s education; and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies in sex ed. The Internet’s potential for misuse, whether through a computer or a mobile phone, is at least as profound as a chef’s knife, a Camaro, or a .22, but our efforts to educate children about Internet safety are far more sporadic and less thorough.

Approaching the risks for children on the Internet in a thought-provoking and intellectual manner, this study skillfully integrates contemporary news reports and disturbing legal cases to show how Facebook and other ready-made forums for information exchange are breaking down boundaries of privacy and facilitating a growing number of criminal convictions for cyberbullying, child pornography, hacking, and copyright infringement.

Also included is a discussion of how the widespread use of camera phones, mobile tablets, and social media sites has given rise to a new and dangerous practice among teens: sexting. This reference provides parents with an authoritative lesson in cyberethics and practical instructions for instituting household internet policies, as well as school officials and communities with lessons on how to educate children about the responsible use of emerging mobile technologies.

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