ISOC-CH event “Society, Internet, and Privacy” held at ISOC EMEA HQ
On 16 May, 2013, the ISOC EMEA headquarters office hosted twelve people for the ISOC-CH discussion about “Society, Internet, and Privacy”. Are social networks and privacy antagonistic?
The social networking phenomenon has indeed changed the nature of respect for privacy, making it possible for an organization to have a systematic access to personal information. Without demonizing their use, it is advisable to know the dangers, and to respect certain principles in order to regain control of one’s digital identity. The guest speaker of the evening was Fabien Jacquier of KYOS – IT Security, and the ISOC-CH member who planned and organized the event was Raphaël Dard.
After two short presentations about ISOC and its Swiss Chapter (ISOC-CH), Fabien gave a general picture of the kinds of challenges met by average Internet users today. His presentation covered security and privacy of social networks, how to evaluate your level of safety online, and how to regain control of your online identity.
Seven key tips that Fabien shared to keep control of your online identity were:
1. Separate your private and professional social usage: Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter. Differentiate your private and professional passwords.
2. Protect your personal information: Know and strenghthen your privacy settings, passwords, family, do not mention your absences and travel.
3. Master your reputation: Have an online presence, photo tagging, content on your public space, Google alerts, remove yourself of search results.
4. Create multiple groups of contacts: Examples: friends, family, colleagues, club with specific permissions in the settings.
5. Do not accept as friends others than people that you know: The friends of my friends are not necessarily my friends! Avoid personal address book import. Accept only contacts you have physically met.
6. Ensure your own safety: Pay attention to the applications that you install.
7. Ensure your children’s safety: Exercise awareness and control.
During the discussion, it was suggested that the ISOC-CH Board consider creating several items that we can produce and share with members and globally. These included: an awareness kit for parents and schools; ISOC and ISOC-CH could initiate online discussions related to the privacy issues on discussion lists; ISOC-CH member Richard Hill suggested the publication n www.isoc.ch of a “How To” kit – to protect phones, accounts, and more; Jacek mentioned a video from one of the ISOC chapters is being produced about protecting your account via teaching about privacy and online security (in Catalonian). There are other ISOC chapters doing work on privacy and ISOC-CH should contact them. These actions will be discussed more by the Board and put to the members for support and knowledge gathering.
Later in the summer there will be other events, some focused on security and privacy, and we hope to engage more members. Look for email notifications on the Announcements list about events in your region of Switzerland and if you would like to host a discussion, please feel free to begin planning one, and the Board can support you where needed and possible.
A BIG THANK YOU to Fabien Jacquier of KYOS and Raphaël Dard, for organizing and driving this event! Thanks as well to the ISOC EMEA HQ for hosting us, for the presentation of Jacek Gajewski on ISOC Europe, and for those who attended and contributed to the discussion.
To learn more about KYOS please visit: http://www.kyos.ch/
Follow up action for ISOC-CH members:
ISOC-CH is interested in having more discussions about security and privacy. We would like to host another event similar to this – would you be interested in joining? If so, please send an email with questions and proposed ideas for detailed topics to Lynn at vice-Chair-internal@new.isoc.ch or to the Discussion List (discussions@lists.isoc.ch). Do you know about a tool we should look at or of a group that is doing “How To” protect your privacy that you would like to share? Mail us!
