Category Archives: New Media

MN students involved with promoting media literacy at the Legislature SF2565

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MinnPost reports on a mash up of students involved with civic and technology, specifically students speaking to the legislature about media literacy…

On March 2, [student, Mary] Jensen spoke to lawmakers in support of a proposal to create a “Minnesota Civic Seal,” a graduation credential for students who receive civics instruction in five areas, including media literacy. Students will be expected to complete a community-centered project and reflect on its “measurable civic impact.”

Before she was familiarized with the seal, Jensen experienced the intersection of technology and civics firsthand.

For Jensen, using her voice to advocate had “always been a part of her personality,” but she said there were limited opportunities for civic engagement at her private school, Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul.

Jensen speaks about youth and social media…

While social media connected Jensen with civic engagement opportunities, her peers were preoccupied with misinformation and cyberbullying.

“A lot of the time people are like, ‘I read this source that said this,’ but that source is just a short Tiktok video clip that they saw,” Jensen said. “And it’s like, ‘You didn’t proofread this. You did not evaluate if the source was correct.’”

She added that problems occur when students don’t apply traditional fact-checking strategies to social media contexts: “if you do [get your news from social media], you should vet that source, too.”

National polling data supports Jensen’s concerns around digital media literacy. Ninety-four percent of teens believe their schools should be required to teach media literacy, according to a 2024 News Literacy Project study. The study also found that only about 40% of teens reported any media literacy instruction.

The article goes on to talk about the specific legislation and how it combines technology and civics in one program…

Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, said several media literacy bills in previous years have stalled because of funding concerns. The Civic Seal proposal attempts to address that issue by having the program administered through the YMCA Center for Youth Voice.

The Center will lead the Civic Seal Task Force that the bill proposes, which is composed of students and professionals who will review the Civic Seal guidelines.

With the help of Mike Dean, YMCA Center for Youth Voice director, Jensen and other students created a progress and validity tracking app for Civic Seal participants.

New MN Bill: End the state’s tax exemption for digital advertising, sales and services HF4343

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The Minnesota House reports…

Once upon a time, the main place you’d find advertising was in a newspaper. But then billboards became ubiquitous, followed by commercials on radio, then television. Today, it’s an inescapable element of your online experience.

But did you know that no taxes are collected when digital ads are bought in Minnesota? Nor are they for billboards. Sponsored by Rep. Liz Lee (DFL-St. Paul), HF4343 would end the state’s tax exemption for digital advertising, sales and services, and do the same for billboards. And it would lower the state’s sales tax rate by 0.125%.

On Wednesday, the House Taxes Committee laid the bill over, as amended, for possible omnibus bill inclusion.

They looked at

 HF4343 would end the state’s tax exemption for digital advertising, sales and services, and do the same for billboards. And it would lower the state’s sales tax rate by 0.125%.

 

New MN Bill introduced: require age monitoring and verification for social media platforms HF4138

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I am going to try to at least track the bills that get introduced that are at all related to broadband and/or broadband use. I may not follow all closely. Click the bill number for more info and updates:

From the MN House:

Rep. Peggy Scott (R-Andover) believes social media platforms “are designed to be addictive.”

And minors, she notes, are especially vulnerable to the dangers posed by social media, and as such, need extra protection.

HF4138 would require age monitoring and verification for social media platforms, parental approval, and specific treatment of accounts for children under age 15 related to addictive features, paid advertising, and the creation and termination of accounts.

“This bill does not ban users from having social media, instead it requires a parent or guardian to approve of social media contractual agreements,” Scott said of the bill she sponsors.

Via voice vote, the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee approved the bill, as amended, Tuesday and sent it to the House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee.

New MN Bill introduced: authorize live broadcast meetings subject to the Open Meeting Law using social media HF3295

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I am going to try to at least track the bills that get introduced that are at all related to broadband and/or broadband use. I may not follow all closely. Click the bill number for more info and updates:

From the MN House:

More citizen engagement in government affairs is a good thing, right?

Rep. Jimmy Gordon (R-Isanti) thinks so. He sponsors HF3295 that would authorize a public body to live broadcast meetings subject to the Open Meeting Law using social media.

Current law allows state governmental units to hold official meetings by “interactive technology,” but Gordon says more clarity is needed on whether “interactive technology” includes social media streaming, and if it does, whether online comments during the meeting, if allowed, would be part of the official public record.

“HF3295 would clear all that up and hopefully lead to more public bodies live broadcasting meetings, which in turn would lead to a more engaged and informed electorate,” he said.

By a voice vote, the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee approved the bill Thursday and sent it to the House Elections Finance and Government Operations Committee.

Much of the debate focused on how to handle public comments on livestreamed meetings.

The Benton Institute looks at model legislation for a People-First Model Chatbot Bill

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The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society reports…

This week, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and the nonprofit Fairplay released model legislation for a People-First Model Chatbot Bill. The People-First Chatbot Bill intends to give lawmakers a straightforward approach to address the harms caused by artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot products developed and deployed by tech companies with little oversight or transparency. Rather than outlawing chatbots, the model bill provides a workable, clear framework to encourage the development of safer technology.

Why are they doing this?

Recent lawsuits show that chatbots can cause devastating harm to people of all ages, including both children and adults. This model bill endeavors to make them safer for everyone.

The bill looks at several aspects of Chatbot…

The People-First Chatbot Bill is organized into a number of sections, each tackling a different facet of chatbot use, privacy protections, transparency requirements, and bill implementation:

  • Data Privacy and Security

  • Transparency for Users

  • Safety by Design: Assessments and Transparency Requirements

Constantly checking your phone can drain your focus and memory

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Here’s good information (or reminder) about smartphone use from the Washington Post, as summarized by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society…

For many of us, checking our phones has probably become an unconscious reflex, similar to breathing or blinking. Glancing at your phone can begin to compromise your cognitive skills once it passes a certain threshold. Studies from Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Keimyung University in South Korea found that checking your phone about 110 times a day may signal high risk or problematic use. Over eight years of research involving teenagers and millennials, Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, observed that participants checked or unlocked their smartphones between 50 and more than 100 times per day, on average every 10 to 20 minutes while awake. “The phones and digital media are reinforcing for our brains, activating the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. The phones create a compulsive habit loop where we check without thinking and experience withdrawal when we don’t check or don’t have access to our phone,” said Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

 

White House launches the Genesis Mission to promote and support AI

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The White House announces launch of the Genesis Mission (summary of original borrowed from Benton Institute for Broadband & Society...

America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories. This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.  The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.  The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.  We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.  The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership. This executive order:

  • Establishes the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.
  • The Secretary of Energy shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing high-performance computing resources, AI modeling and analysis frameworks, computational tools, domain-specific foundation models, secure access to appropriate datasets, experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.
  • Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Energy shall identify and submit to the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains.
  • The APST, through the National Science and Technology Council, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies.
  • Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing the Platform’s operational status and capabilities.

Rethinking the smart city as an intelligent archway: research report

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The Journal of Community Informatics released a new edition that has a number of broadband-forward or adjacent articles. (Spoiler, I may post a few article based on the reports in the next week.)  One article (Rethinking the Smart City as an Intelligent City Archway) caught my eye, because I’m in Galway, Ireland for the week and staying very close to tourist location, the Spanish Arch.

Long time readers may remember that I used to spend long periods of time living in Ireland. This time, I’m just here for a couple weeks visiting a daughter. But I’ve always enjoyed comparing technology use in Minnesota to Ireland. I’m learning how tech-dependent Ireland is with digital currency. Cah rarely seems to exchange hands; it’s mostly phone transactions and credit cards. That’s a big change.

Technology has made being a tourist easier. No more asking directions to get to your hotel, Google map is there. Need the train timetable? Google again. Learn more about the art, scan the QR code. On the flip side, not as many stranger-chats in the pub or bus queue as folks are on their phones. This report looks more at how technology makes being a citizen easier…

Urban intelligence is the ability to understand and navigate the physical and digital dimensions of “connected complex urban places”. For example, new infrastructures (e.g., sensors, Internet of Things {IoT} devices like smart lamp posts) are needed to capture and represent places in software platforms and on the Internet. New spatial skills and spatial thinking are needed to navigate these new interfaces and networks of places. This paper aims at understanding urban intelligence by exploring variations in how smart cities have been conceptualized; how citizens have been placed within the smart city; and how Canada’s smart cities initiative has placed on urban (and highly spatial) problems over digital technologies. The metaphor of the Roman arch is used to describe the interdependency of the building blocks of smart cities. Components(building blocks)of the smart city, be they openness, resilience or inclusion, must all be present, and build towards what we argue is the keystone of urban intelligence. We discuss how these components lead to a new consideration of the smart city, the Intelligent City.

The examples are interesting to read, too long to abstract here but the conclusion is helpful to folks who think about community and technology…

In this paper we proposed a model of an intelligent city illustrated by an archway of seven stones. Five stones (smart, open, learning, inclusive and resilient) are structured as a foundation. Another stone (digital citizenship) helps us understand the multiple scales at which the intelligent city functions. Urban intelligence is the keystone, which is reinforced by these stones. Our model is locationally scalable. At the urban (local) scale, the components of the intelligent cities help inhabitants to capitalize on their hybrid physical and digital environment. At the global (earth) scale, the intelligent city is not an isolated transformation of urban areas. Instead we see the archways of the intelligent city and across a long line of municipal transformations from the industrial revolution to a city rooted into the networked society through the connections of digital infrastructures and social relations(Castells 2000). We hope this paper opens a dialogue on what is desired and achievable in the smart city and what constitutes place in a digitally enabled urban space. What is special about the physicality of the smart city and the way we characterize it? How do we ensure that best practice models of the smart city do not emphasize technology alone at the expense of local context and the engagement of local people? What new skills are required tonavigate within the smart city? Implicit in all the stones is the need for spatial thinking and reasoning capabilities as the basis of digital citizenship. Spatiality and smartness share common components, in particular networks and nodes (centres of activity), the importance of topology (relationships), the importance of mobility, and the scalability of activities, knowledge and intelligence. Individual cities and their inhabitants must decide even as they join other cities in a global network of smart cities

Be brave enough to ask the dumb questions – especially with technology

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I have taught every age from preschool to graduate school, and while this post may seem a little adjacent to what I usually write, I couldn’t resist because I read it and was reminded myself that a dumb, legitimate question can turn out to be the smartest discussion starter. Politico asks Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker questions “about the hype, risks and data-privacy threat of AI.” Before founding Signal (an encrypted-messaging app), she worked for Google.

When you talk to policymakers now, whether about energy or national security or economic competitiveness, AI is inevitably part of the equation. What do you make of how big an impact AI is having?

I would dare you or anyone listening who has contacts with policymakers and politicians to just sit them down and say: What do you mean by AI? I think what you’ll get at that point is a lot of hype, a lot of fog, a lot of magical thinking. And that’s a big problem. We are seeing a wave of hype washing over critical institutions, governments, and key decision makers to trust these technologies with key functions that those who understand the technical reality, the limitations, the conditions for how these actually work would never have advised.

What’s the antidote to that? You also always hear this argument that Washington or policymakers don’t understand the technology well enough to regulate it, or put guardrails on it.

That old trope that all you need is tech brains in Washington to move aside the dusty policymakers and get things on the rails of modernization has been around for a very long time. But they’re not too old or too crusty to understand the domains in which they operate, be that education or health care or national security. And tech has a lot to learn on the fundamentals of those domains.

The antidote — there’s no one weird trick here, but just be brave enough to ask the dumb question. People are deeply afraid of being humiliated for being dumb about AI. And I will hear NATO chiefs, I will hear CEOs of Fortune 100 corporations, repeating as received wisdom claims about AI that make absolutely no sense.

These quote-unquote stupid questions, like, “How does this work? Do we have control over the data? What are the privacy implications? Are there vulnerabilities there?” These are just basic questions that should be the floor before entrusting critical decision making to obscure systems that often don’t, in my opinion, meet that bar for safety use in critical domains.

Reports comparing social media use and mental health in rural youth vs suburban and urban youth

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Hopelab looks at mental health and social media in kids in rural areas…

In this report, Hopelab examines the mental health, well-being, and online behaviors of young people aged 14-22 (n = 1,274) living in rural communities (21% of those sampled) compared to those living in suburban/urban communities (77%). The term “rural” refers to respondents who selected “rural” when asked to choose the option that best describes where they live, while “suburban/urban” includes those who selected either “suburban” or “urban.” This report explores how rural young people engage with social media, experience mental health and well-being, and access support for mental health needs in comparison to their suburban/ urban peers. This project centers the voices and experiences of rural young people and was developed using youth co-design practices. Youth co-distillation also informed the interpretation of results.6

Here are their key findings:

  1. Rural young people are less likely to use social media daily compared to their suburban/urban peers.
  2. Rural young people are more likely to prefer communicating via social media rather than in person, and they use social media differently than their suburban/urban peers.
  3. Rural and suburban/ urban young people experience depression and anxiety at similar rates.
  4. Rural young people are less likely to use mental health and well-being mobile apps, even when experiencing depression or anxiety.
  5. Rural young people are less likely to have attended online therapy to support their mental health and well-being.
  6. Rural young people are more likely to permanently stop using social media due to harassment, negative experiences, or concerns about time spent online.
  7. Rural young people are less likely to encounter affirming content about diverse identities on social media.
  8. Rural young people are less likely to report high levels of life purpose.

White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan

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The White House reports…

The White House today released “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan”, in accordance with President Trump’s January executive order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI. Winning the AI race will usher in a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people.

The Plan identifies over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars – Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security – that the Trump Administration will take in the coming weeks and months.

Key policies in the AI Action Plan include:

  • Exporting American AI: The Commerce and State Departments will partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages – including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards – to America’s friends and allies around the world.
  • Promoting Rapid Buildout of Data Centers: Expediting and modernizing permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs, as well as creating new national initiatives to increase high-demand occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians.
  • Enabling Innovation and Adoption: Removing onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment, and seek private sector input on rules to remove.
  • Upholding Free Speech in Frontier Models: Updating Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.

“America’s AI Action Plan charts a decisive course to cement U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. President Trump has prioritized AI as a cornerstone of American innovation, powering a new age of American leadership in science, technology, and global influence. This plan galvanizes Federal efforts to turbocharge our innovation capacity, build cutting-edge infrastructure, and lead globally, ensuring that American workers and families thrive in the AI era. We are moving with urgency to make this vision a reality,” said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios.

“Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology with the potential to transform the global economy and alter the balance of power in the world. To remain the leading economic and military power, the United States must win the AI race. Recognizing this, President Trump directed us to produce this Action Plan. To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships. At the same time, we must center American workers and avoid Orwellian uses of AI. This Action Plan provides a roadmap for doing that,” said AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks.

“Winning the AI Race is non-negotiable. America must continue to be the dominant force in artificial intelligence to promote prosperity and protect our economic and national security. President Trump recognized this at the beginning of his administration and took decisive action by commissioning this AI Action Plan. These clear-cut policy goals set expectations for the Federal Government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” said Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.

Learn more at AI.Gov.

 

Proposed changes to federal tax bill would deny states federal funding for broadband if they regulate AI

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The Minnesota Star Tribune reports…

Senate Republicans have made changes to their party’s sweeping tax bill in hopes of preserving a new policy that would prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.

In legislative text unveiled Thursday night, Senate Republicans proposed denying states federal funding for broadband projects if they regulate AI. That’s a change from a provision in the House-passed version of the tax overhaul that simply banned any current or future AI regulations by the states for 10 years.

There are a few other telecommunications-related changes as well…

The GOP legislation also includes significant changes to how the federal government auctions commercial spectrum ranges. Those new provisions expand the range of spectrum available for commercial use, an issue that has divided lawmakers over how to balance questions of national security alongside providing telecommunications firms access to more frequencies for commercial wireless use.

Senators are aiming to pass the tax package, which extends the 2017 rate cuts and other breaks from President Donald Trump’s first term along with new tax breaks and steep cuts to social programs, later this month.

New MN bill introduced: HF3295 authorizing Open meeting broadcasting through social media

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The MN House of Representatives reports…

Gordon introduced:

H. F. 3295, A bill for an act relating to Open Meeting Law; authorizing meeting broadcasting through social media; amending Minnesota Statutes 2024, section 13D.065.

The bill was read for the first time and referred to the Committee on Judiciary Finance and Civil Law.

Here is the full bill as introduced:

A bill for an act
relating to Open Meeting Law; authorizing meeting broadcasting through social
media; amending Minnesota Statutes 2024, section 13D.065.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1.

Minnesota Statutes 2024, section 13D.065, is amended to read:

13D.065 USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA.

Subdivision 1.

Use by members.

The use of social media by members of a public body
does not violate this chapter so long as the social media use is limited to exchanges with all
members of the general public. For purposes of this section, email is not considered a type
of social media.

Subd. 2.

Broadcast use.

(a) A public body may use social media to live broadcast a
meeting subject to this chapter. A public body is not required to offer a social media comment
feature during a broadcast authorized under this subdivision. If a social media comment
feature is offered as a part of the broadcast, comments posted by members of the public
during the broadcast are not considered government records under section 15.17 or 138.17
unless the public body’s required notice under section 13D.04 and this subdivision provides
that the comments are a part of the meeting record. A public body that accepts comments
posted in a social media comment feature during a broadcast as public testimony must
establish rules of order for the comments and their discussion by the public body.

(b) A public body that uses social media to live broadcast a meeting pursuant to this
subdivision must state in the required notice under section 13D.04 that social media
broadcasting will occur and provide information about how the broadcast may be accessed.
If a public comment period is offered during the meeting, the notice must state the process
for the submission of public comments before or during the meeting from individuals viewing
the meeting remotely in order to be included in the meeting record. If a social media comment
feature will be offered as a part of the broadcast, the treatment of such comments for the
purposes of public testimony and the meeting record must be stated in the public notice.

(c) Nothing in this subdivision authorizes a public body to conduct a meeting through
social media for the purposes of section 13D.015, 13D.02, or 13D.021 if the social media
technology does not meet the requirements for interactive technology under this chapter.

EFFECTIVE DATE.

This section is effective the day following final enactment.

X (formerly Twitter) sues Minnesota over state law that bans AI-generated “deepfakes” to influence an election

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Reuters reports…

Elon Musk’s social media platform X sued Minnesota on Wednesday over a state law that bans people from using AI-generated “deepfakes” to influence an election, which the company said violated protections of free speech.
The law replaces social media platforms’ judgment about the content with the judgment of the state and threatens criminal liability if the platforms get it wrong, according to the lawsuit that was filed in Minnesota federal court.
“This system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary,” X said in its complaint. Musk has described himself as a free speech absolutist and he did away with Twitter’s content moderation policy when he bought the company in 2022 and renamed it X.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the named defendant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Minnesota’s law bans the use of deepfakes – videos, pictures or audio clips made with AI to look real – to influence an election. At least 22 states have enacted some form of prohibition on the use of deepfakes in elections, according to data compiled by Public Citizen, which says that AI can be used to manipulate voters.

Digital Footprint: Who knows what about you online – and how can you manage that.

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I ran across an article a week ago entitled, What Does DOGE Know About You?. It includes a quiz; it’s interesting to check it out. If you answer a few broad questions, it will tell you what DOGE is likely to know about you. The article reminded me of a TED Talk I saw in Edinburgh in 2012 about how your phone company is watching from Malte Spitz. He sued his phone company to get the data they had on him and his interactions based on cell phone use. He created visual tools to help the audience understand not only how much data this was, but what it meant when you tracked interactions among users in aggregate in terms of what was happening in a community.

In 2022, PC Mag published an article on how much data social media and tech companies gather on users. (They used research from Security Baron, a privacy company, which I think is worth mentioning. You always want to know who paid for and wrote the report.) I like the article for our purposes now because the results are shared in an easy graphic. (At right.) As you read through the explanations, you get a feel for what these companies know. (Click to get a larger version of the image.)

What is a Digital Footprint?

All these interactions, purchases, clicks, pings from your phone to the cell tower, are things that make up your digital footprint. I think it’s important to recognize that you leave a footprint wherever you go. Important to share with your young people around you. And just like footprints in real life, they are helpful and hurtful. Footprints can help you find your way back to the cabin on a snowy day, but it means people can use them to find you. Even being found is a double edge sword. The more you know about it, the more you can make your digital footprint a positive.

How can I manage my Digital Footprint?

The Internet Society is an international nonprofit focused on empowering people to keep the Internet a force for good. They have a Top 10 list for ways to manage your digital footprint, followed by a link to videos for more information.

  1. Get a better understanding of the issues.
    There’s a lot of information about privacy to take in. Think about the implications of what you’re sharing when you sign up for new services, or install new apps.
  2. Develop your ‘basic hygiene” habits.
    Privacy is about context. If you use one email address for home and another for work, or one credit card for online shopping and another for everything else – it will help keep different parts of your digital footprint separate.
    Be mindful about what you share via social sites and elsewhere, because every selfie, retweet, or like is probably more public, and more persistent than you think.
  3. Become a sophisticated user of your online tools and services.
    Browsers, devices and apps are often set to share your personal data out of the box. Take a look at the privacy settings and see if you’re comfortable with what the default settings are.
    When an application asks for “permission to send you push notifications and use your location data”, think about if that’s really what you want. Your camera and smartphone usually record your time and location in each photo you take, and when you share those photos, you could be sharing that data.
  4. Find and use specific online privacy tools.
    There are many helpful online privacy tools. Use them to protect your online privacy, and to keep track of what information you’re sharing as you surf.
  5. Manage cookies.
    Check what settings your browser(s) have for cookies; find your browser’s “cookie store” and spend some time looking through it. Notice how many of the cookies in there have been set by sites you weren’t even aware of visiting… and then see whether your browser allows you to block third-party cookies. Some browsers offer this as an easy option, but there are also a lot of plug-ins you can use to help control tracking cookies.
  6. Check your privacy settings
    Erasing cookies only goes so far. You should also know your rights when it comes to information that you share on websites, especially open services such as social networks, blogs, and photo sharing sites. It’s a lot easier to prevent your data from being shared than it is trying to remove it from an advertiser database later. Check what permissions apply to content you upload.
  7. Understand the realities of sharing your stuff.
    When you post something on the internet, it’s out there forever. Deleting online content often only removes it from public view, it can be stored in archives and databases forever. Even deleting your account isn’t a guarantee that your content will be deleted. It may still be accessible through other means
  8. Think about the trade-off between convenience and privacy.
    OK, one is instant gratification and the other is a long-term intangible… but the choice is still up to you. Maybe a little inconvenience is worth it, to regain some control over your digital footprint.
  9. Understand the “bargain” you make with online service providers.
    “Free” doesn’t mean “free”: it usually means you pay through the monetization of data about you. “Freemium” doesn’t mean your data isn’t monetized: it usually means you don’t see advertisements in that service, app or game.
  10. “There is no app for this”.
    That’s the bottom line. We can inform you and suggest some privacy tools, but the reality is that there’s no one-click answer: in the long term, the best way to improve your privacy is to change your online habits. We’re here to help, but you hold the key.

Want to know more? Watch our got tutorials on managing your digital footprint.