Tag: tracking

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A Flurry of Privacy Bills, FLoC Flies Away, and a Smart Assistant’s Long Memory

A brown and white Pomeranian, wearing a red sweater and brown eyeglass frames, stands in front of an iPad sitting on a wooden tabletop.
Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash

Congratulations on making it through the first month of 2022! As we prepare to enter the second month of the year, let’s take a few moments to catch up on a few news items in the privacy world.

A Flurry of State Data Privacy Bills

State legislators wasted no time introducing the latest round of data privacy bills at the start of the legislative year. Some states are reviving previously introduced bills with the hopes of pushing them through in the new session, while other states are finally joining the bandwagon and introducing comprehensive data privacy laws for the first time since the rush for state data privacy laws began several years ago.

Out of all the states introducing bills this legislative session, all eyes are on LDH’s home state, Washington State. The Washington Privacy Act, which failed to pass multiple times in previous legislative years, is back. However, there are currently two other competing comprehensive data privacy bills. The first bill, the People’s Privacy Act, deviates from WPA in several key places, including stricter requirements around data collection and processing (e.g., requiring covered entities to obtain opt-in consent for processing personal data), biometric data handling, and a private right of action. The second bill, the Washington Foundational Data Privacy Act, is a new bill that brings the idea of creating a new governmental commission, something that the two other bills lack. Each bill has its strengths and weaknesses concerning data privacy. Nevertheless, if Washington manages to pass one of these bills – or a completely different bill that is still yet to be introduced – the passed data privacy bill will influence other states’ efforts in passing their privacy bills.

FLoC Flew Away

Rejoice, for FLoC is no more! We previously covered Google’s attempt to replace cookies and the many privacy issues with this attempt. The pushback from the public and organizations has finally led Google to rethink its approach. It also didn’t help that major web browsers, which were supposed to play a critical role in FLoC, refused to play along.

Google didn’t completely abandon the effort to replace cookies, nevertheless. Google announced a new proposal, Topics, as an attempt to create a less privacy-invasive alternative to cookies. It’s still early to tell if this FLoC alternative is truly any better than FLoC, but initial reports seem to suggest that the Topics API is an improvement. However, we did notice that some of these reports mention that users would be primarily responsible for understanding and choosing the level of tracking in browser settings. Ultimately, we are still dealing with businesses pushing tracking user activity by default.

Smart Assistants Have Long Memories

Have you requested a copy of your personal data yet? Even if you are not a resident of the EU or California, you can still request a copy of your personal data from many major businesses and organizations. This includes library vendors! Requesting a copy of your data from a company can highlight how easy it is for a company to track your use of its services. A good library-related example is OverDrive’s tracking of patron borrowing history, even though users might assume that their borrowing history isn’t being recorded after flipping a toggle to “hide” their history in user settings.

The latest example of extensive user tracking comes from a Twitter thread of a person going through the data Amazon has collected about her throughout the years, including all the times she interacted with Amazon Alexia. We’re not surprised about the level of data collection from Amazon – the tracking of page flips, notes, and other Kindle activity by Amazon has been a point of contention around library privacy for years. Instead, this is a reminder for libraries who are currently using or planning to use smart speakers and smart assistants to provide patron services that Amazon (and other companies) will collect and store patron data generated by their use of these services by default. This is also a good reminder that your smart speaker in your work or home office is also listening in on your conversations, including conversations around patron data that is supposed to remain private and confidential.

If you have a smart speaker (or other smart-enabled devices with a microphone) at your library or in your home office, you might want to reconsider. The companies behind these products are not bound to the same level of privacy and confidentiality as libraries in protecting patron data. Request a copy of data collected by the company behind that smart speaker sitting in the library. How much of that data could be tied back to data about patrons? How much do your patrons know about the collection, use, and sharing of data by the company behind the smart speaker at the library? What can your library do to better protect patron privacy around the smart speaker? Chances are, you might end up relocating that smart speaker from the top of the desk to the bottom of a desk drawer.

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Mid-September Readings, Viewings, and Doings

A light brown rabbit sits on top of a keyboard looking up at two computer screens, reading email.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/toms/127809435/ (CC BY 2.0)

September has proven itself to be a busy month for all of us! This week we’re taking a breather from our usual (longer) posts by highlighting a few resources that you might find of interest, and some homework, to boot.

What to Read

For years there has been a concerted effort in getting libraries to secure their websites through HTTPS, but have those efforts paid off? A recently published article by librarian Gabriel Gardner describes how much further we have to go with HTTPS on library websites, but it doesn’t stop there. The article also describes how libraries are complicit in third-party tracking with various web trackers found on library websites, including (unsurprisingly) Google Analytics. Give this article a read, then hop on over to your library website. How is your library website contributing to surveillance by allowing third parties to vacuum up all the data exhaust your patrons are leaving behind while using the library website? We’ve written about alternatives to Google Analytics and other forms of tracking if you need a place to start in reducing the third-party tracker footprint at your library.

What to Watch/Read

At LDH, we talk a lot about ethics and technology. You might be wondering where you can learn more about the ethics of technology without diving headfirst into a full-time college course. If you have some time to watch a few TikTok videos and read a couple of articles during the week, you’re in luck – Professor Casey Fiesler’s Tech Ethics and Policy class is in session! You can follow along by watching Dr. Fiesler’s TikTok videos and doing the readings posted on Google Docs. But you can do much more than following along – join the office hours or the discussions in the videos!

What to Do

Perhaps you’re looking for something else to do other than website or ethics classwork. We won’t hold that against you (though we really, really recommend reviewing what trackers your library website has). So, here’s a suggestion for your consideration. It’s been a while since we did our #DataSpringCleaning. Do you dread cleaning because there’s always so much stuff to deal with by the time we get around to doing it? Taking five to ten minutes now to dispose of patron data securely can go a long way to reducing the amount of data you have to deal with during the annual #DataSpringCleaning. It’s also an excellent privacy and security hygiene habit to adopt. Spending a few minutes to secure sensitive data can fill in the gaps in your schedule between meetings or projects, or it can be part of your routine for starting or ending your workday. And it does give you some feeling of accomplishment on particularly frustrating days where nothing seems to have gotten done.

If you come across any library privacy-related resources that you would like highlighted in the newsletter, let us know by emailing newsletter@ldhconsultingservices.com. In the meantime, best of luck with the workweek, and we’ll catch you next week.

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Watching You Watching Me

Imagine this – you visit your local art museum for the first time in over a year. You’re excited to be back in the physical building! You get to be in the same physical space as the art! You make your way to one of your favorite art pieces in the museum, but when you finally arrive, you find something odd. Next to your favorite art piece is a small camera pointing at you and everyone else viewing your favorite art piece.

A ShareArt camera next to a painting in the Istituzione Bologna Musei.
Image source: Istituzione Bologna Musei

Is this to make sure people are wearing masks? Social distancing? Or is it something more?

Museum-goers in Italy are already facing this reality with the inclusion of the ShareArt system in several Italian museums. The system aims to track how long museum visitors spend at the museum piece, creating data to inform exhibition layout and scheduling decisions. In addition, there is interest in having the system capture and analyze facial expressions as mask mandates fall to the wayside. While this project aims to guide museums in making their collections more visible and accessible for museum visitors, it also brings up new and perennial concerns around privacy.

Tracking Bodies, Tracking Data

Libraries and museums are no strangers to counting the number of people who come into a building or attend an event. Door counters installed on entrance/exit gates are a common sight in many places, as well as the occasional staff with a clicker manually counting heads in one space at a specific time. The data produced by a door counter or a manual clicker counts heads or people in an area usually is relegated to the count and the time of collection. This data can get very granular – for instance, a door counter can measure how many people enter the building in the span of an hour, or a staff person can count how many people are in a space at regular intervals in a day. This type of data collection, if nothing else is collected alongside the count and time collected, is considered a lower risk in terms of data privacy. Aggregating count data can also protect privacy if the door or event count data is combined with other data sets that share data points such as time or location.

Patron privacy risk exponentially increases when you introduce cameras or other methods of collecting personal data in door or space counts. Door or space counters with webcams or other cameras capture a person’s distinct physical traits, such as body shape and face. This updated door counter mechanism is a little different than a security camera – it captures an individual patron’s movements in the library space. With this capture comes the legal gray area of if audio/visual recordings of patron use of the library is protected data under individual state library privacy laws, which then creates additional privacy risks to patrons.

Performing for an Audience

One good point on Twitter about the ShareArt implementation is that people change their behavior when they know they are being watched. This isn’t a new observation – various fields grapple with how the act of being observed changes behavior, from panopticon metaphors to the Hawthorn Effect. If a project is supposed to collect data on user behavior in a specific space, the visible act of measurement can influence the behavioral data being collected. And if the act of measurement affected the collected data, how effective will the data be in meeting the business case of using behavioral data to improve physical spaces?

Libraries know that the act of surveilling patron use of library resources can impact the use of resources, including curtailing intellectual activities in the library. Privacy lowers the risk of consequences that might result from people knowing a patron’s intellectual pursuits at the library, such as checking out materials around specific topics around health, sexuality, politics, or beliefs. Suppose patrons know or suspect that their library use is tracked and shared with others. In that case, patrons will most likely start self-censoring their intellectual pursuits at the library.

The desire to optimize the layout of the physical library space for patron use is not new. There are several less privacy-invasive ways already in use by the average library to count how many people move through or are in a particular space, such as the humble handheld tally clicker or the infrared beam door counter sensors. Advancements in people counting and tracking technology, such as ShareArt, boast a more accurate count than their less invasive counterparts but underplay potential privacy risks with the increased collection of personal data. We come back to the first stage of the data lifecycle – why are we collecting the data we are collecting? What is the actual, demonstrated business need to track smartphone wifi signals, record and store camera footage, or even use thermal imaging to count how many people enter or use a physical space at a particular time? We might find that the privacy costs outweigh the potentially flawed personal data being collected using these more invasive physical tracking methods in the name of serving the patron.

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To Build or to Target?

A black and white dart board hanging on a wall of wooden shingles. Three orange darts are on the board's three outermost rings (1, 2, 3) and two orange darts are embedded into the wall to the left of the board.
Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the privacy world. First, Colorado is poised to be the newest state to join the patchwork of US state data privacy law. Next, Overdrive acquires Kanopy. And then there’s what happened when a patron submits an FOIA request for their data. Privacy forgot that it’s supposed to be summer vacation! Today we’re setting aside those updates and talking about a topic that has been one of the most requested topics for the blog.

You or your colleagues might be scanning through the last couple months of American Libraries in preparation for ALA Annual later this month, only to come across the “Target Acquired” article in the May 2021 issue (page 52-53), profiling three libraries in their use of marketing and data analytic products. The profiles seem harmless enough, from email newsletter management to collection analysis. They want to understand their patrons to serve their communities better. These profiles give three different ways these products can help other libraries do the same.

Did you notice, though, that none of the profiles talked about patron privacy?

There’s a reason for that. Marketing and data analytics products such as customer relationship management systems (CRMS) rely on personal data – the more, the better. The more data you feed into the system, the more accurate the user profile is to create a personalized experience or more effective marketing campaigns. CRMS are increasingly integrated into the ILS – OCLC Wise is an example of such an integration, and other ILS companies plan to release their own versions or create better integrations with existing products on the market. The libraries using Engage and Wise are excited about the possibilities of better understanding their patrons through the data generated by patron use of the library. However, we wonder if these libraries considered the consequences of turning patrons into data points to be managed in a vendor system.

It should be no surprise to our readers that LDH’s approach to marketing and data analytics in libraries does not place data above all else. Data ultimately does not replace the relationship-building work that libraries must do through meeting with community members. However, advertisement pieces such as the one in American Libraries aim to normalize user profiles in CRMS and other analytics products in libraries. As the article states at the beginning, data plays a large part in library outreach. With the pressure to prove their value to the community, library administration and management will reach for data to secure their library’s future in the community. The cost of over-relying on data to prove a library’s value, however, is usually left unexamined in these situations.

With that said, let’s do a little exercise. We have the chance to write a sequel to the advertisement piece. Instead of questions about the products, our questions will turn the tables and focus on the libraries themselves:

What are the privacy risks and potential harms to different patron groups from using the product?

Increased patron surveillance via data collection and user profiling can lead to disproportionate privacy risks for several patron groups. In addition, the business models of several vendors create additional harm by targetting specific minoritized groups, such as reselling data to data brokers or providing data to government agencies such as ICE.

What business need(s) does the product meet? What other products can meet the same need that doesn’t create a user profile or require increased patron surveillance?

Sometimes libraries buy one system that doesn’t match the actual business need for the library. For example, several collection management systems on the market do not require individual-level data to provide analysis as to how to spend collection budgets or meet patron demand. In addition, libraries do not need market segmentation products to perform collection usage analysis.

How does the library reconcile the use of the product with Article III of the ALA Code of Ethics, Article VII of the ALA Library Bill of Rights (and the accompanying Privacy Interpretation document), and other applicable library standards and best practices around patron privacy?

This one is self-explanatory. FYI – “Other libraries are doing the same thing” is not an answer.

What are social, economic, and cultural biases encoded into the product? What biases and assumptions are in the data collection and analysis processes?

Library services and systems are not free from bias, including vendor systems. One bias that some libraries miss is that the data in these systems do not reflect the community but only those who use the library. Even the list of inactive users in the system does not fully reflect the community. Moreover, data alone doesn’t tell you why someone in your community doesn’t have a relationship with the library. Data doesn’t tell you, for example, that some patrons view the library as a governmental agency that will pass along data to other agencies. Data also won’t fix broken relationships, such as libraries violating patron trust or expectations.

What is the library doing to inform patrons about the use of the product? Do patrons fully understand and consent to the library using their data in the product, including pulling data from data brokers and creating profiles of their library use?

More likely than not, your library does not give patrons proper or sufficient notice, nor give patrons the chance to explicitly consent for their data to be collected and used in these products. Refer to the Santa Cruz Civil Grand Jury report on what happens when the public calls out a library using a product in the advertisement article without full patron notification or consent.

Keep these questions in mind the next time you read about marketing and data analytics products in professional magazines such as American Libraries. These advertisement articles are designed to fly under the radar for readers who might not be thinking about the privacy implications of highlighted products and practices. Building relationships with the community require a considerable amount of time and care from the library. Data might seem to be a shortcut in speeding up the process. Nonetheless, choosing to view patrons as targets and metrics can ultimately undermine the foundation of any sustainable relationship.

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Beyond Web Cookies: Google’s FLoC

A lone Canadian Goose sits among a flock of ducks sitting in the snow.
You’re about as “anonymous” as the goose in this flock with FLoC.
Image source – https://www.flickr.com/photos/see-through-the-eye-of-g/5480240484/ (CC BY 2.0)

It’s been a while since we last wrote about the many ways companies track users with cookies and beyond. This week we’re coming back to our “Beyond Web Cookies” series with the latest development in site tracking and why your library should consider opting out to protect patron privacy.

(Puns in this post are fully intended.)

Ditching the Cookie for the FLoC

 Web cookies come in several flavors, from session and persistent cookies to first- and third-party cookies. A cookie can track your behavior online, across sites, and collect personal information for marketing, advertising, and other purposes. End users can block cookies through various browser settings and plugins, but that blocking can only go so far when websites find alternative ways to track users beyond web cookies, such as privacy-invasive WordPress plugins. Nonetheless, the majority of companies rely on cookies to collect information for marketing and advertising to end-users. When end users block cookies, the company that relies on advertising revenue has limited options in creating targeted marketing.

Enter Google. Early in 2021, Google announced a new ad-tech called the Federated Learning of Cohort, or FLoC, that reports being less privacy-invasive than web cookies. This “privacy-first” technology aims to create large groups of people with similar interests based on browsing activity. Advertisers can then target these large groups grouped by topics without the possibility of identifying unique individuals through tracking data. Sounds too good to be true, right?

FLoC’ing Problems

While FloC promises a privacy-preserving way to continue making money through advertising, the ad-tech does not escape the potential of violating user privacy. The first problem is, well, Google. Google already has many ways to track users outside of Google Analytics through their products and sites that use Google APIs and services. As Shoshana Wodinsky points out, FLoC expands Google’s access to user data in the online advertising world, giving Google almost full unrestricted access to user data used for targeted advertising. Wodinsky points out that FLoC’s grouping of people by topics can lead the system to create groups of people around sensitive, personal topics. That grouping creates potential future harm and discrimination if these groups were part of a data leak or breach. Grouping people by topic will most likely increase predatory targeting, scams, and discrimination practices.

FLoC’s promise of privacy is weakened further by continuing the cross-site tracking behavior we find in web cookies, but with a twist. According to FLoC, the information gathered about a user’s browsing history can be matched up to other trackers that already have personally identifiable information. If a user logs into a site and doesn’t log back out for the duration of their browsing session, this service can potentially take the FLoC information and tie it back to the user account.

Getting the FLoC Out to Protect Patron Privacy

Google recently rolled out a “test” of FLoC to a random group of Chrome users. If you are not sure if you are in this test group, visit EFF’s Am I FloCed? to check if your Chrome browser has FLoC enabled. Google claims that there will be an opt-out option for Chrome users by April, but it’s late April and there is no sign of the opt-out option. Libraries can help patrons protect their privacy by disabling third-party cookies in the Chrome browser settings on public computers in addition to installing privacy-preserving browser plugins and privacy-preserving browsers such as Brave and Tor.

How can libraries protect patrons from having their activity tracked on library websites and services? Libraries that have some control over their library website can include an opt-out in the HTTP header of the library website. However, this might not be an option for libraries that do not have that level of control over their website or the server that hosts their library website. There are some workarounds to this, such as the FLoC opt-out plugins for WordPress (disclosure – LDH has installed the Disable FLoC plugin to opt-out of the FLoC test).

But what about vendor sites? You can use https://tanck.nl/floc-check/ to find out if a website has opted out of FLoC. Vendor sites that have not opted out of FLoC might not be aware that their website is included in this test. Use this opportunity to talk to your vendor about FLoC and ask how they will protect the privacy of your patrons on their site. This is also an opportunity to check your vendor’s privacy policy and contracts to find if your vendor is collecting patron data for advertising and marketing purposes. Now is the time to renegotiate those terms or start shopping for other vendors that better protect patron privacy if the vendor won’t budge on their use of patron data for advertising.

In short, FLoC doesn’t really replace cookies. Instead, it adds more personal information – some of it sensitive – into the targeted advertising environment controlled by one company. Because FLoC includes all websites into the FLoC test by default, libraries must take action to protect patron privacy now to ensure that patron data does not end up in the ever-growing collection of and access to user data by Google.

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Cookie Break

Two columns of three cookies of different varieties, including chocolate, chocolate hip, and oatmeal raisin.
Photo by Julissa Capdevilla on Unsplash

LDH is proud to announce that it will now serve cookies to our blog readers! Enjoy your digital cookie without guilt! Just be sure that you don’t leave any crumbs trailing behind you as you munch away while browsing the Web…

…

…

… yeah, we thought that was a cheesy* early April Fool’s joke, too.

With April Fool’s Day in a few days, let’s take a moment to appreciate the lighter side of data privacy. Cookies are a perennial privacy humor topic by the very nature of its name, and the infamous cookie banner has become the focus of many privacy humor skits. This skit answers the question of what happens when you hit a cookie wall when you want a cookie recipe:

Do you remember all those “We’ve Updated Our Privacy Policy” emails in May 2018 as GDPR came into enforcement? There’s a meme for that:

There are times where humor can educate users about data privacy, but only when it is done well and within an appropriate context. An example of this comes from The Onion. Another example is the segment from an Adam Ruins Everything episode explaining the cost of using “free” internet services:

[Yes, we are fully aware of the irony of linking to a YouTube video of this segment.]

We can’t forget that humor has a time and place for it to be effective, though. More often than not, humor backfires like Mark Zuckerberg’s joke about Facebook privacy at their developer conference in 2019. Going back to the beginning of this post, cookies are the subject of many privacy jokes because of the nature of the web tracker’s name. It’s an easy joke that doesn’t take much effort to think about, but the lack of thinking through a joke can leave users more frustrated with the person telling it than not. The context of when you use humor matters – cookie popups are already confusing and frustrating to end-users, and a joke in the popup is more likely to backfire than lighten the end user’s mood. And because the web tracker’s name is already confusing to end-users, joking that your staff like chocolate chip cookies in the popup banner doesn’t tell users anything about what the actual web tracker cookie does.

In short, humor has its place in communicating important privacy topics when done thoughtfully and within an appropriate context. Your privacy notice and cookie banners are not places for humor, but instead places where you need to be clear about your privacy practices and what the user can do to protect their privacy. This doesn’t mean that all data privacy jokes are off-limits. You can still serve cookies (accommodating for dietary considerations!) in the library staff area to start a discussion or awareness program about web tracking – but be mindful of your audience and the context of data privacy humor when attempting to add some levity to end-user communications.

* Cheesy cookies are a thing and are as delicious as their sweet counterparts.

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Tracking the Trackers: Blacklight

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Visiting a website almost always means that you will be tracked. Be it a cookie, or a script, or even an access log on the server that hosts the site, you will leave some sort of data trail for folks to collect, analyze, and use. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to track all the ways (pun semi-intended) a website is keeping tabs on you. What trackers should you be worried about the most? Which trackers should you allow in your browser? Are there any trackers that might track you even when you leave the site?

The Markup published Blacklight, the latest tool in the suite of tracker detection tools that allow users to discover the many ways a website is tracking users and collecting data in the process. In all, Blacklight reports on major tracking methods, including cookies, ad trackers, Facebook tracking, and Google Analytics. Blacklight also checks to find out if the website is taking your digital fingerprint on top of logging your keystrokes or session. The creators of the tool blogged about their development process, for those who want to nitty-gritty technical details on the development of the tool and how it works.

One unique feature of Blacklight is giving the user the ability to find out how a website tracks without having to visit the website. This is nothing new for folks who can write a script; however, Blacklight makes this process much easier to achieve for the majority of users who are otherwise visiting website after website to investigate how each website is tracking them. One example would be libraries performing privacy audits or reviews on library or vendor websites. Instead of having to potentially expose the worker to various tracking methods while auditing or dealing with different browsers and their settings during the auditing/testing process, the worker can work from a list of URLs and stay on one tab in their browser of choice.

There are some drawbacks if libraries want to use Blacklight as their main tracker detection tool. As mentioned above, Blacklight tracks major tracking methods, but the resulting report does not give much information beyond if Blacklight found something. Let’s take Hoopla for example. We entered the main site URL – www.hoopladigital.com – and Blacklight visited a random page…

A screenshot explaining how Blacklight accessed the Hoopla homepage, including two screenshots of the mobile version of the Hoopla home page and their privacy policy.
The irony of the random page chosen is not lost on us.

This is what Blacklight found:

  • Three ad trackers
  • Facebook tracking
  • Google Analytics cross-site tracking
  • Session logging (as well as possible keystroke logging)

However, the report only tells the user that these trackers are present. There is no information in the report about how to prevent session logging or blocking ad trackers. Instead, the user will need to go elsewhere for that information. The tool creators did create a post for users wondering what to do with the results, but this information is not front and center in the report.

Another drawback is that several library vendor URLS might not be able to be checked due to proxy or access restrictions. Let’s say you want to test https://web-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.spl.org/ehost/search/basic?vid=1&sid=e58a91f5-4f12-4648-991f-4bdc9ff8f94b%40sdc-v-sessmgr01 – the link to access an EBSCO database for a local public library. Blacklight will try to visit the website but will be stopped at the EZproxy login page every time. There is a possible way to work around this limitation by taking the source code from the two Blacklight Github repositories and reworking the code to allow for authentication during the testing process. However, it might be simpler for some libraries to visit the individual site with tracking detection and blocking browser add-ons, such as Privacy Badger, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, and Ghostery.

Despite these drawbacks, Blacklight is useful in illustrating the prevalence of tracking on major websites. Library workers might use Blacklight alongside other tracking detection tools for privacy audits, provided that the library workers know the next steps in interpreting the results, such as comparing what they found to the privacy policy of the vendor or library to determine if the policy reflects reality. The tool would also be a welcomed addition to any digital literacy and privacy programming for patrons to demonstrate how websites can track users, even when a user leaves the website. Blacklight will most likely have updates and new features since the code is freely available, so it might be that some of these drawbacks will be addressed in an update down the road. But enough talking – take Blacklight out for a spin! First destination – your library’s homepage. 😉

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Data Discounts

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

At LDH we have been known to have a sweet tooth – there are always four to five different types of sweets within reach of the office desk. Therefore, it shouldn’t come to a surprise to our newsletter readers that when presented with the option to get a free cup of Heart Eyes (red velvet cookie dough, white chocolate chips, and heart sprinkles) from a local edible cookie dough vendor, LDH took full advantage of the opportunity to indulge.

The free cup of dough came with a catch, though. The free dough was part of a grand opening celebration for a co-working space. To receive the free dough, you had to give your email address to the co-working space company. Here we have a dilemma – what are the privacy tradeoffs that I’m willing to make for cookie dough?

Multiple times a day we find ourselves asking similar questions – what are the privacy tradeoffs that we’re willing to make for discounts at our favorite store, or a particular brand, or other business? What are the privacy tradeoffs you’re willing to make for everyday items or essential services? A recent opinion piece in The New York Times illustrates this tradeoff with a fictionalized company that finds its inspirations from many different sources, from grocery store loyalty cards to checking in at a store location or posting a brand marketing hashtag on social media. The story also touches on how surveillance and tracking disproportionally affect vulnerable populations, such as those who can’t afford basic services without giving up their data to receive a discount. A real-life example of this happened to LDH. We received an offer from our health insurance company to sign up for a discounted Amazon Prime account that was only available to those receiving insurance through the state health insurance marketplace (we declined the offer).

You can choose to not trade your data for discounted goods and services, though it is getting harder to avoid this data transaction when paying for goods and services, or if you interacted with a business through their website or social media. Even going to a physical store location can involve a data transaction if the business is using beacons to seek out your mobile phone WiFi or Bluetooth signal or using facial recognition technology at their store. If the only way that you can afford health or car insurance is to install a tracking device in your car or to provide data from your health app, then your data is paying for that cash discount.

Currently, you have limited options to protect your privacy when dealing with health and car insurance companies. For other businesses, though, there are some ways you can limit how much data you give to them:

Using one or more of these strategies can limit the amount of personal data collected on you by the business while still receiving the financial incentives provided by the company.

Going back to our “free” cookie dough situation, the co-working space company did get an email address (used for promotions) from us, but nothing more, even though the email form included fields for name, address, and phone number. We got our cookie dough, the company got an email address that will promptly toss their promotional emails into a filtered folder, followed by an unsubscribe request. The things that we will do for free cookie dough…

NISO Cybersecurity webinar, February 12th

Come join LDH and others on Wednesday, February 12th, for a webinar discussion on cybersecurity!

NFAIS Forethought: Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Internal Systems
Every organization, as a standard course of action, should be implementing protection policies and updating protective measures surrounding their confidential data and internal systems. Phishing and malware are a constant threat. As a response, reliable cybersecurity requires an integrated approach in ensuring the safety of networks, devices, and data. How should enterprises and institutions be thinking about their cybersecurity needs? What basic requirements should be in place? What guidelines or best practices exist? What are the best resources? This roundtable discussion will bring together experts active in the field to address these and other questions.

Confirmed participants in this roundtable discussion include: Daniel Ayala, Founder, CISO/Chief Privacy Officer, Secratic; Blake Carver, Senior Systems Administrator, LYRASIS, Becky Yoose, Principal, LDH Consulting Services; Hong Ma, Head, Library Systems, Loyola University of Chicago; Wayne Strickland, Acting Associate Director at Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service; Christian Kohl, Principal, Kohl Consulting.

NISO members can attend the webinar for free; non-members can also register for the webinar at https://www.niso.org/events/2020/02/nfais-forethought-cybersecurity-protecting-your-internal-systems. We hope to see you there!

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Beyond Web Cookies: WordPress, Plugins, and Privacy

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Previous posts in our series about web cookies, tracking, and privacy discussed ways that tracking applications such as Google Analytics can track website users across sites. We covered how using other Google-related products can put site user privacy at risk through third party data collection. This week we explore another area in which online user privacy might be compromised, and this area is one that libraries and library vendors are familiar with – WordPress.

WordPress is one of the most used content management systems – over 35% of the sites you visit on the Web use WordPress. Sometimes libraries need a website that works “out of the box”: install on a local server, pick a theme, edit some pages, and publish. Sometimes libraries choose to host a site on the WordPress.com commercial hosting service. Other times libraries use WordPress when they need a customized site to fit their libraries’ needs. Library vendors also work with WordPress by working with libraries to create customized WordPress sites and plugins.

WordPress is popular for a reason. It’s flexible enough to provide a good basic site with as little or as many customizations as the site owner sees fit. One of the ways WordPress achieves this flexibility is plugins. Because WordPress is Open Source, anyone can write a plugin and share the plugin with others. On the WordPress Plugin Directory site, there are almost 55,000 plugins to choose from, ranging from site statistics and analytics and form creators to social media integrations and email newsletter systems (for example, LDH uses MailPoet). The possibilities plugins bring to a library website are endless.

The same could be said about the ways that plugins can put your patrons’ privacy at risk. WordPress plugins have the potential to collect, retain, and even share your site users’ data to the creators of the plugin and other third parties. For example, some libraries might forego Google Analytics to use Jetpack or other WordPress statistics and site management plugins. What they might not be aware of is that site management plugins like Jetpack also use cookies, along with other tracking methods, to collect user data from your site.

These plugins can carry a security risk as well. WordPress plugins are used to compromise WordPress sites. One such hack happened with the GDPR compliance plugin in 2018 (the irony of this hack is not lost on LDH). What can you do to protect the privacy of your library and site users when using WordPress plugins?

  • Research the developer – some plugins are created by one person, while others are created by companies. Evaluating the developer can help with determining the trustworthiness of the plugin as well as uncover any potential privacy red flags.
  • Read the privacy policy – unfortunately, the Plugin Directory doesn’t have a standard spot for developers to publish their plugin privacy policy, which means that you will need to research the developer’s site. Jetpack has a general site regarding data collection and tracking which some might have skipped over if they didn’t search the support site.
  • Download plugins from trusted sources – the Plugin Directory is a good place to search for plugins, though this doesn’t relieve you from doing some homework before downloading the plugin.
  • Once you download the plugin:
    • Check and change any settings that might be collecting or sharing user data
    • Update the plugin regularly
    • If you no longer use the plugin, delete it from your site

This is only a small part of how you can use WordPress and still protect the privacy of your patrons. In a future installment of the series, we will talk about how you can be proactive in communicating privacy practices and options to your site visitors through WordPress.

Thanks to subscriber Carol Bean for the topic suggestion!

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Beyond Web Cookies: The Ways Google Tracks Your Users

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Earlier we discussed the basics of web cookies, including the cookies used in tracking applications such as Google Analytics. However, there are many ways Google can track your online behavior even when you block Google Analytics cookies and avoid using Google Chrome. Because Google provides applications and infrastructure for many web developers to use on their sites, it’s extremely hard to avoid Google when you are browsing the Web.

An example of this is Google Fonts. The LDH website uses a font provided by the service. To use the font, the following code is inserted into the web page HTML code:

link href=”https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans&display=swap” rel=”stylesheet”

For those who are not familiar with HTML code, the above line is instructing the web page to pull in the font style from the external fonts.googleapis.com site. The FAQ question about user privacy describes the data exchanged between our site and the Google Font API service. The exact data mentioned in the FAQ is limited to the number of requests for the specific font family and the font file itself. On the surface, the answer seems reasonable, though there is always the possibility of omission of detail in the answer.

This isn’t to say that other Google services provide the same type of assurance, though. In Vanderbilt University Professor Douglas C. Schmidt’s research study about how Google tracks users, many other Google services that collect data that can be tied back to individuals. Schmidt’s study leans heavily toward tracking through mobile devices, but the study does cover how users can be tracked even through the exclusive use of non-Google products thanks to the pervasiveness of third-party tracking and services that feed data back to Google.

We covered some ways that you can avoid being tracked by Google as a web user in our earlier newsletter, including browser add-ons that block cookies and other trackers. Some of the same add-ons and browsers block other ways that Google tracks web users. Still, there is the same question that we brought up in the earlier newsletters – what can web developers and web site owners do to protect the privacy of their users?

First, take an audit of the Google products and API services you’re currently using in your web sites and applications. The audit is easy when you’re using widgets or integrate Google products such as Calendar and Docs into your site or application. Nonetheless, several Google services can fly under the radar if you don’t know where to look. You can make quick work out of trying to find these services by using a browser plugin such as NoScript or Privacy Badger to find any of the domain URLs listed under the Cookies section in Google’s Privacy and Terms site. Any of the domains listed there have the potential to collect user data.

Next, determine the collection and processing of user data. If you are integrating Google Products into your application or website, examine the privacy and security policies on the Google Product Privacy Guide. APIs are another matter. Some services are good in documenting what they do with user data – for example, Google Fonts has documentation that states that they do not collect personal data. Other times, Google doesn’t explicitly state what they are collecting or processing for some of its API services. Your best bet is to start at the Google APIs Terms of Service page if you cannot find a separate policy or terms of service page for a specific API service. There are two sections, in particular, to pay attention to:

  • In Section 3: Your API Clients, Google states that they may monitor API use for quality, improvement of services, and verify that you are compliant within the terms of use.
  • In Section 5: Content, use of the API grants Google the “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sublicensable, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to Use content submitted, posted, or displayed to or from the APIs”. While not exclusively a privacy concern, it is worth knowing if you are passing personal information through the API.

All of that sounds like using any Google service means that user tracking is going to happen no matter what you do. For the most part, that is a possibility. You can find alternatives to Google Products such as Calendar and Maps, but what about APIs and other services? Some of the APIs hosted by Google can be hosted on your server. Take a look at the Hosted Libraries page. Is your site or application using any libraries on the list? You can install those libraries on your server from the various home sites listed on the page. Your site or application might be a smidge slower, but that slight slowness is worth it when protecting user privacy.

Thank you to subscriber Bobbi Fox for the topic suggestion!