Tag: privacy literacy

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Patron Privacy Support: Holiday Edition

An orange cat looking at a laptop screen and pawing a mouse tracking pad.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25473210@N00/421211549 (CC BY 2.0)

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but there are still plenty of opportunities to buy the last-minute gift to mark the end of a rough year. Patrons who might have gone to the library to ask for help setting up their new tech gadget will still find their way to the library help desk via chat, email, or phone. Other patrons might come to the help desk with questions from researching which tech gadgets to gift to others (or to themselves!). Why not use this time to do a bit of privacy instruction?

For patrons wondering what to buy – Mozilla’s *privacy not included is an excellent starting point for researching tech gifts that connect to the internet. The guide contains information about data privacy and security for each product and even warns you if a particular product doesn’t meet a minimum security standard.

For patrons who are shopping online – Even though most of our lives have shifted to online thanks to the pandemic, patrons might not have online safety and privacy in mind while shopping online. Account privacy settings, passwords, credit cards, web tracking, digital fingerprinting, phishing emails – the list of vulnerabilities and threats goes on and on. Having a sense of the patron’s threat model will help you determine which guides and resources you can use to help the patron protect their privacy while online. The Virtual Privacy Lab from the San Jose Public Library gives patrons a customizable privacy toolkit they can then use to protect their online privacy and security. You can also send along this short newsletter from SANS about secure online shopping that will help patrons to protect themselves while they shop online.

For patrons setting up their new tech gadget – The patron is excited about their new tech gadget! That is until they can’t figure out how to set it up. This is a great place to introduce privacy-preserving practices found in the Data Detox Kit and in other resources on the Choose Privacy Every Day site to set up their devices to protect their privacy and security right when they start using the gadget.

Last, an evergreen reminder – do not buy or gift an Amazon Ring.

No matter the gadget question or help request this holiday season, there’s always an opportunity to give the gift of privacy to patrons through sharing ways to help them protect their data. While this year might prove a challenge to provide the same level of support at the information or help desk, the above online resources make meeting that challenge a little easier for both the patron and for library staff. Happy shopping and tech support-ing!

FYI – New Newsletter Privacy Policy

Today (as in an hour before publishing our post!) MailPoet announced that it has been acquired by WooCommerce. LDH uses MailPoet for our weekly newsletter mailings. We will be reviewing the new Privacy Policy for the app to decide if we should continue to use the app. While we do not currently use any of the analytics features on MailPoet, we will need to determine if this acquisition means a change in data collection and processing with the third-party vendor. LDH will announce any changes to the newsletter app or other updates in a future post. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to email us.

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News and Resource Roundup – Michigan Privacy Law Update, Privacy Literacy Toolkit, and Testing Your Infosec+Digital Literacy Knowledge

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat! This week we bring you an important state legislative update, a resource guide, and three quizzes to start your week.

Michigan library patron data law amendment update

Last December LDH reported on SB 0611, an amendment that would considerably weaken Michigan’s library data privacy laws. The bill allows for libraries to release patron data to law enforcement without a court order:

A library may disclose library records without a court order or the written consent described in subsection (2) under any of the following circumstances:

(a) Upon the request of a law enforcement officer who is investigating criminal activity alleged to have occurred at the library or if the library requests the assistance of a law enforcement officer regarding criminal activity alleged to have occurred at the library, the library may disclose to the law enforcement officer any library record pertinent to the alleged criminal activity. The library director and any other person designated by the library board or commission is authorized to determine whether to disclose library records subject to this subdivision. The library is not required to release library records under this subdivision and may require the law enforcement officer to obtain written consent or an order of the court as required in subsection (2)

After almost a year of inactivity, the bill is now progressing through the state legislature. If you are a Michigan library and concerned about this bill, please contact your state representative and senator about your concerns.

Privacy literacy clearinghouse

If you are searching for resources or examples of privacy literacy instruction after reading our last post, you’re in luck! Digital Shred is a collection of teaching resources and case studies for anyone wanting to incorporate privacy literacy into their instruction work, from information literacy sessions to dedicated privacy workshops. Created and curated by Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, the authors of the article featured in the last TotH post, Digital Shred also provides another way to keep current on ongoing privacy and surveillance news and issues. Explore the site, and don’t forget to check out the teaching resources and materials for the privacy workshop series created by the authors!

Quiz time

The school year is in full swing, and students are now facing their first round of quizzes and tests. We want to share the pain joy of test-taking by highlighting three quizzes to test your information security – as well as literacy! – knowledge and skills:

  • Spot the Phish – This quiz tests how well you can spot a phishing email in the Gmail email service. While the focus is only on one email platform, the lessons here can apply to any email service!
  • Spot the Deepfake – Deepfakes are images or videos that have been altered to create a realistic image or recording of someone’s likeness doing or saying things that, in reality, did not happen. AI, machine learning, and other developments in technology have made it so that some deepfakes are almost indistinguishable from unaltered media. This quiz will test your observational skills along with your critical thinking by asking you which videos are deepfakes and which ones are the real thing.
  • Spot the Troll – our last quiz focuses on identifying which social media accounts are real, and which ones are fake. It’s not as easy as you’d think…
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Teaching Privacy in Information Literacy Sessions

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Summer is over, and for many library workers, the start of the fall season means an uptick of library instruction sessions and programs. Academic and school library workers who already face the challenge of creating and teaching “one-shot” instructional sessions have the added challenge of moving these sessions online instruction during a pandemic. With this move to online comes the increased use of learning management systems and other online tools and applications that collect, process, and share student data. This increase in use translates into an increased risk to student privacy, particularly while interacting with the library’s online services and programs, and this risk might not be readily apparent to students who are facing many stressors and challenges in their first few weeks into the new school year.

Navigating “one-shot” library instruction sessions or other short interactions between the library and the student is not easy; however, these instruction sessions and interactions also present the opportunity to raise awareness about data privacy and security. One way to take advantage of this opportunity is to move away from the mindset of approaching data privacy in library instructional sessions as “yet-one-more-thing” to teach in an already packed session. That’s not an easy task for anyone, even for those of us who are privacy advocates.

In their article “Privacy literacy instruction practices in academic libraries: Past, present, and possibilities“, Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm surveyed academic library workers and their experiences incorporating privacy into their instructional sessions. Out of 80 respondents, over one-third reported not including privacy topics in their library instruction sessions. Even those who include privacy topics in their instruction were not satisfied with privacy instruction at their institutions, with the majority being neutral or somewhat dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction stems from a variety of factors, with 80% of 55 respondents (n=44) stating that they do not have enough instructional time to cover privacy. This is the reality of many library instructors overall and requires a radical departure of how libraries traditionally deliver library instruction to students, as well as working with faculty and staff in developing and delivering this instruction.

What caught our attention at LDH is the second factor that almost 62% of survey respondents (n=34) identified as to why they are dissatisfied with privacy instruction – “Privacy is not a priority learning outcome for IL sessions”. What can make privacy a priority, then? Again, this requires a radical departure of how libraries approach information literacy (IL), but it also requires an examination of the priorities of the individual library as well as the professional frameworks library workers use to inform their approach to IL and pedagogy. While ALA’s Library Bill of Rights explicitly states privacy as a patron right, the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education only includes one mention of privacy concerning “issues related to privacy and the commodification of personal information.” Privacy is much more than the commodification of personal information, but the Framework does not reflect this reality. The lack of guidance in the Framework, as well as the dearth of concrete case studies of privacy in IL in the LIS literature noted by Hartman-Caverly and Chisholm, leave IL instructors little to work within a time where privacy instruction is more vital than ever.

Hartman-Caverly and Chisholm give their readers some guidance in their privacy literacy case study as well as their recommendations for addressing the barriers noted by survey respondents. The literature review of the article is another resource to glean strategies in bringing privacy into IL practices.

For those who are still struggling in thinking about how to incorporate privacy into an already packed lesson plan, think about this – what library resources and apps are you teaching to your students? Library systems and applications, particularly third-party apps and resources, also collect, process, and share patron data. Talking about digital data privacy and security in the context of using library services and resources can be one way to introduce students to privacy literacy while educating patrons about the library’s privacy practices. This approach to privacy literacy in “one-shot” instructional sessions can be strengthened by offering patron data privacy services such as the services provided by Cornell University; nonetheless, using the library’s own resources and tools when talking about privacy is a start for library instructors who are short on time.