Privacy and The Internet

I recently came across an article that concerned how large corporations handle users' private data. Privacy International recently published a report that ranks several major companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, and Google among others, by how well they handle private data.

Please note that this is not a final report, but more of a guide and should be viewed as both a warning and a reminder to anyone who uses a computer that your privacy is not 100% guaranteed.

The Interim rankings summary can be found here:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-553961

The Interim Rankings itself, in the from of a PDF (Adobe Acrobat), can be viewed here:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/internet/interimrankings.pdf

In regard to the impact on our equipment and services, the following does not apply in regard to Privacy International's summary:

• There are no browser toolbars installed on the Item Catalog or Patron computers because I feel that they add no value or security, and would affect neutrality.

An effort is made to be as neutral as we can. This is why you have a choice of software; two web browsers (Firefox and Internet Explorer), two office suites (MS Office and OpenOffice), two virtual mapping programs (GoogleEath and NASA WorldWind), and other open-source programs like The Gimp. Yes we filter our computers, but this is due to a requirement for our Federal Funding.

• Our own e-mail accounts, patron accounts and item circulation do not use any of Google's services. With one exception, that being one staff e-mail account hosted by Yahoo, our e-mail and item circulation services and related technical support are provided by the Valley Library Consortium.

The following does apply:

• This Blog uses Blogger, which is owned by Google. However, the information posted is meant to be accessible by the public. The purpose of the blog is to post news about technology that the District uses and other related matters.
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• GoogleEarth is installed on all publicly-accessible computers for use as a reference tool. While activity stored locally on a patron computer's hard drive is wiped, search information and content accessed from Google's servers may be retained.
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• The IP Address of a patron computer is forwarded through our content filtering and caching server to the Internet. Therefore, the activity of a publicly-accessible computer can be recorded and tracked.
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• Activity on a publicly-accessible computer that may be stored on its hard drive is always wiped at the end of the day or, in some cases, when a web browser window is closed.
  

All publicly-accessible computers are configured to save as little information as possible. Both web browsers are configured to clear their caches and cookies when they are closed, as well as not save any passwords. The Windows operating system itself is configured to minimize any storing of user activity; Faronics DeepFreeze wipes any changes or other stored data when a computer is rebooted or shutdown.

Our content filtering and caching server does not track user activity, store any personal information, and is only accessible from the Internet by employees only for maintenance and diagnosis purposes.

As for our public wireless Internet service, I encourage you to read our Wiki entry, which describes in detail what information we record and why. WifiDog is open-source software and uses only one Google service, GoogleMaps, to locate wireless hotspots on a map.