Pop quiz: You’ve just chosen to “opt-out� of an online program or service that gathers information on you. Do you: (A) Breathe easier knowing the collection of your personal information has stopped. (B) Stay alert knowing that just because you’ve chosen to “opt-out� doesn’t mean the information gathering stops, it merely means you’ll stop getting targeted ads based on that information. The correct answer is B.

As we hand over more of the daily grind to digital assistants (or assistance) of one kind or another, it’s wise to take a moment and consider just how many pieces of your personal information are being left in cyberspace, what that information is being used for, how long it’s stored and who has access to it.

Taking that moment—a kind of personal privacy audit—is a prudent thing to do. Before doing that, however, you might want to bone up on some basic privacy myths and facts by reading an article CDT President Leslie Harris has written called: Myth and Merriment, Digital Privacy: What You Don’t Know.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 4:46 pm and is filed under CDT, Consumer Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.