Tag: Privacy

Learning to Unplug

It’s the last day of the year for me. I won’t be writing any new blog entries in until next year. Rebecca and I take each Christmas off and don’t come back until after Epiphany, which is the actual 12th day of Christmas (just in case you were wondering about the songs that use it). If you send me an e-mail, I won’t respond until January 9th-the first work day after Epiphany. I completely unplug while on vacation and you should too. Here are the top reasons I unplug during my down time–perhaps you’ll find a reason that works for you.

  • Rebuilding Our Marriage: Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m devoted to my wife. I consider my marriage far more important than any other element of my life here on earth. Rebecca patiently waits for me the rest of the year, but vacations are devoted to her and our marriage. I look forward to our time together and count the days until we can spend time doing something interesting together.
  • Focus on Family, Friends, and Neighbors: My family has always been good about working around my schedule. There are times during the year where I simply tell them that a book deadline is far too important to visit with them and they understand. My closest friends and even my neighbors are equally cognizant of my need to work. I try to make up for the lack of attention during the rest of the year with visits throughout vacation.
  • Personal Health: I want to provide my readers with the best service that I can. That means taking care of my personal health: spiritual, mental, and physical. Disconnecting from everything gives me time for self-reflection and helps me to grow as a person. It also provides me with much needed rest. No one can do a job well unless they have received the proper rest and nourishment.
  • Organizing Personal Finances: Believe it or not it is never too early to sort out your retirement plans. I have been doing lots of research into retirement planning on websites like Key Advice and have decided that I might release some equity from our home to fund my retirement. In case you were not aware, equity release is a way for homeowners aged 55 and over to release tax-free funds from their homes without having to move. It is an increasingly popular way for people approaching retirement age to boost their finances. This makes it one of many finance options in retirement for those who are looking to make a retirement plan. In fact, a friend of mine recently decided to release some equity from his home so I must remember to ask him for some advice about what to do. Apparently, nowadays you can even use an equity release calculator to work out how much money you might be entitled to claim. Naturally, I am very interested to see how much money I might be able to claim from my own property. Furthermore, although no one likes to think too much about no longer being around, I have also established who I want to take on the responsibility of lasting power of attorney over my estate. After talking to a solicitor and writing a will, I found some brilliant estate planning resources online that explained how to establish an LPA. You can take a look here if you would like to learn more: https://willstrustslpa.co.uk/serviceareas/lasting-power-of-attorney-online/.
  • Personal Projects: It seems as if too many people wait until retirement to work on anything fun. I’m not planning to wait. During vacation, I take time to work on personal projects–things I want to do for the sheer pleasure of doing them. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to retire anytime soon, unless an injury or some other unforeseen issue makes retirement necessary. So, I plan to do a few of these projects while I’m still able to do them. Vacation provides the opportunity.


During this holiday season, whatever your beliefs or wherever you live, I hope that you take time to unplug. Do something interesting, exciting, spiritual, or simply satisfying. The world of work will still be here when you get back–you’re truly not indispensable. It may seem as if the world will come down around your ears if you disconnect, but that’s a lie. I’ve been doing it for many years now and nothing terrible has happened. I have no cell phone, no computer access, no connectivity of any kind to impede my efforts to relax and recharge.

Rebecca and I will spend the next two weeks putting puzzles together, baking cookies, working on crafts, and sitting by the wood stove reading. We’ll spend part of the holiday in church, addressing our spiritual needs. Yes, there will even be some movie watching on our television, but that’s going to take second place to getting reacquainted after months of hard work writing, gardening, and generally making a living. Of course, I’ll need a little exercise after my lack of restraint in holiday eating (I hope my doctor doesn’t see this), so I’ll do a little wood cutting too. I’m sure that we’ll spend plenty of time with family, friends, and neighbors as well. See you next year!

Exercising Personal Privacy

In my post, “Is Privacy a Right?,” I tell developers that they really need to consider the right of the user to a certain amount of privacy. Books such as C# Design and Development will need to include sections on privacy as part of any update. In fact, privacy is a topic not covered to any extent in any development book on my shelf. The few mentions of privacy appear in older books I’ve written, along with a few moldy references to old books by other authors. If you really want to get a modern treatment of privacy as a question of what the individual requires, you need to look at a non-development book such as “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.” Unfortunately, this book discusses social ramifications—not the techniques a developer uses to ensure privacy. Of course, no matter what the developer does, the user can always thwart any effort to provide privacy, which is the topic of this post.

I find it amazing that people willingly give up their privacy for apparently little or no reason. I read John Dvorak’s post, “I’m Not Home Right Now. Please Come In.” with great interest this morning (after having read the news report that he discusses). The idea that a husband would be able to check up on his cheating wife through an iPhone application is amazing to me. The private detective industry should take note that they’ve been replaced by a phone. It won’t be long before someone comes up with an application to surreptitiously take pictures of the dupe who loads one or more of these applications on their cellphone.

After thinking about this issue for a long time, I’ve come to the conclusion that some people have watched one too many episodes of CSI (and shows of that ilk). There is a sense that someone is going to reach out and grab each of us, and that our cellphones are the only way anyone will find us again. It’s also human nature not to be left out. If people don’t know where we are, we might miss out on something that we think is important at the time, but turns out not to be much of an issue at all in hindsight. I’m sure that little Jerry can find his sock just fine without dad’s intervention over the telephone (a little self-sufficiency does everyone good). The announcement that Maggie has a new tooth can easily wait until mom gets home from the store.

There should be alarm bells going off in the minds of every person who currently owns a cellphone, OnStar, or any other tracking technology. Do you really want someone to follow absolutely every move you make in the interest of providing some uncertain sense of security? Privacy, once lost, is incredibly hard to regain. People should learn how to disconnect in comfort, keep their privacy intact, and discover the wonderful world of being alone every once in a while. I think you’ll find that you’re a lot less stressed once you get used to it. Consider Remembering to Rest as not just beneficial to yourself, but those around you.

Most of all, it’s time that people learn to demand privacy from their technology. Whoever created the new tracking application in the iPhone wasn’t thinking and people should disable it sooner than later. It’s not necessary for vendors to track your every move online. No one gains anything by knowing you’ve gone to the store to buy this week’s groceries. All of the applications that are tracking you are stealing your privacy and making you a target for all of the things you fear most. Don’t give criminals (or marketers) an edge. What is your privacy worth to you? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Is Privacy a Right?

One of the readers of C# Design and Development took me to task some time ago for not discussion the matter of security in my book. He has been the only reader to ever ask me about the issue of privacy, so I didn’t think too much about it at the time. When I wrote the book, I thought it far more important to discuss security-keeping the data, application, and user safe. In fact, the book makes security part of an application triad the developer must consider during the design process. My thinking at the time was that privacy is a matter settled by management as part of a policy that is often implemented outside the developer’s control. To a certain extent that perception is still valid, but I’ve since learned that the developer does bear some responsibility toward the user when it comes to privacy.

A recent ComputerWorld article has made me think yet again about the whole issue of privacy. In this case, OnStar is collecting absolutely every last bit of information they can about you, without your permission, and selling it to anyone with a few pennies to spend. (A later article says that OnStar is reversing course on this decision.) They do tell you about spying on you, but you’ll only find this information if you read through the legalese contained in the Terms & Conditions. However, there are some people who don’t think you have any right to privacy in the first place. Industry leaders that include Facebook chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, Google chief, Eric Schmidt, Sun Microsystems chief, Scott McNealy, and Oracle chief, Larry Ellison would prefer you not to have any privacy whatsoever. They’d simply love to dig into every aspect of your life. The use of newer technologies, such as super cookies, have also proven that companies have a strong desire to invade your privacy.

The design of supercookies and the obvious desire of some technology leaders to invade your online privacy and collect data on you has subsequently inspired many to find ways to hide their IP address. A lot of the time, we are so caught up in luxurious technology, such as iPhones or Macbooks, that we don’t even realize that these devices are collecting data on us and feeding it to all sorts of websites. It’s no surprise that people are now opting to look into VPN’s and proxies to not only hide their IP and therefore protect their personal data, but to unblock websites on Mac and other devices.

So, the developer is faced with a number of questions when it comes to privacy. The most important of which is whether privacy is a right. According to the ComputerWorld article, the senate has finally woken up and decided that perhaps privacy is a matter they really should consider, especially when it comes to such brazen violations such as the one by OnStar. There is some validity to the belief that the Constitution and Bill of Rights offers at least some protection of privacy. Some laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) add additional rights. However, I imagine that we’ll experience years of delays, political wrangling, and legal interpretation before those rights are specifically spelled out in a way that developers (and others) can understand.

Assuming that a certain level of privacy is a right and that it’s legally protected, the developer still has a host of questions to answer. Here are some of the things you should think about as a developer when designing an application.

  • What is the company policy regarding privacy?
  • How does an application specifically guard or expose a user’s privacy?
  • When does a user’s right to privacy override the desire of management to invade it?
  • Which rights does a user forfeit as a member of an organization?
  • Is privacy configurable as an opt in or an opt out selection?
  • Precisely what information does the company collect?
  • Precisely what information does the company actually need to conduct business?


If the developer of the OnStar system had included a simple switch for turning the device off (disallowing any eavesdropping of any sort), the whole issue discussed in the ComputerWorld article would be moot. Unfortunately, no one thought to include such a switch, despite the fact that it would have been an obvious design addition. Of course, we don’t need to look specifically at OnStar as a bad example of privacy thwarted. Many applications today include a “call home” feature and won’t even work if you don’t have an Internet connection. In short, someone somewhere is spying on you constantly.

When you look for privacy-related design information for the developer online or in books, you find it mysteriously missing. The reader who called my book into question was right to do so. I hope that this small article has at least started you thinking about privacy and overcomes the omission in my book. Future posts will fill in some additional gaps, but I’d like to hear your perspective on the issue of privacy first. What questions do you have about privacy? How would you design an application that protects user privacy while meeting organizational needs for information? Let me know at [email protected].

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