privacy

The email account that will not die

a closed envelope

One of my first email accounts was with my internet service provider, SBC Global. The management of the account was transferred to ATT when they merged. When the email service was transferred to Yahoo, I understood that if I didn’t create a paired Yahoo account, the account would be deleted. I didn’t want yet another account, so I let the wait time expire and assumed the account was gone.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email today announcing that that email account would be deleted in about a month if I didn’t log it. I was suspicious of the email but, after checking the information, it seemed legitimate.

Once I went through the gyrations to get a new password on the account, I was able to see 1165 emails that had accumulated over the past 6 1/2 years. There were even a few from just last month. Many were phishing but there were some that were from companies I did business with many years ago.

I added the email address to my Thunderbird email client so that I can know what’s coming in without needing to go to a separate webpage. It’s at the very bottom of the list and I don’t plan to use it for anything beyond canceling sources that are sending to it.

It’s more evidence that even when internet companies say that they have deleted your data, it still might be laying around waiting to resurface.

Action item: PayPal’s privacy statement update

face saying oh no

PayPal is updating its privacy statement with a troubling change next month. PayPal updates its policies so often that it’s hard to keep up. This time they intend to begin sharing information about your shopping history, which is a substantial change.

The service wants to “help improve your shopping experience” by sharing information with merchants. If you live in a state with weak privacy laws (most of them1), you must opt out to prevent that. The U.S. summary of upcoming PayPal policies is at https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/upcoming-policies-full?locale.x=en_US. Past policy updates are kept here https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/archive-policies-full.

To opt out before November 27, 2024, after logging in, select the settings gear near the log out link in the upper right. Then select the tab “Data and Privacy.” About half-way down select the section “Personalize Shopping.” Within that category is a checkbox “Personalize shopping.” If you toggle it off, you will prevent them from sharing your confidential data.

The November 2024 date is when the policy statement takes effect, but you can opt out at any time. The summary text says that they’ll start sharing the data in summer 2025 but the actual privacy statement doesn’t mention 2025. I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from that.

If you want to limit the spread of your shopping history between vendors, go toggle the setting off. If you’re comfortable with another feature eroding your privacy, you don’t need to do anything.

  1. Only California, North Dakota and Vermont are opt-in. ↩︎

iPhone privacy setting fail

Months ago, I made some adjustments to lock down my phone’s privacy settings. Today I found that I got bit by one of my changes. When I was locking things down, I disabled the microphone and camera for Safari.

Other useful apps, such as the MyChart medical records service, use the browser to do video calling.

My first attempt to repair the problem was to look for a bad settings for MyChart, but it didn’t show up there. Until I did a wider search did I find that I had hobbled Safari to my own detriment.

The reason I was unable to solve it in the past is that the problematic setting wasn’t in the obvious places. Camera settings, Microphone settings, Privacy settings and MyChart settings all looked irrelevant. Instead, it was in Safari settings. I hadn’t realized was so integral to other apps.

When they say that any sufficiently advanced technology is like magic, I thought that I would know the right incantation. I couldn’t find the eye of newt. It was hiding in the back of the produce department near the sign “Beware of the leopard.”

On cameras

Out here we’ve been having a lot of fun watching the two babies. They both just turned one. They have really different personalities… not really surprising but it’s nice to see them become their own individuals.

I’ve had a Canon PowerShot camera for a long time. It’s not high end. I prefer buying mid-range devices.  Often my theory is to buy the second least expensive or second most expensive.

I never use my phone camera. For a long time I had it blinded until I wanted to take pictures of the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence at the library. I’m sensitive to privacy concerns and go to longer lengths than most people, thus the blind camera.

So, the real camera I have includes some nice properties that I like.  Some are on the phone but I haven’t used them consistently to know how to put them together with the phone.

I like being able to power the camera up in a moment’s notice.  The optical zoom is convenient for taking pictures with closeups, for example, of kids and an adult.

My sister is a professional photographer so she explained how to use features I didn’t know were there. I’ll get the real manual to learn more.

I like exploring the different options of a technology to see how they work. One feature I’d never used was changing the criteria for light metering. I wanted to take some pictures that were back lighted by a window.  Changing light metering and the manual option let those come out well. It looks like controlling the auto-focus and automatic light metering independently may not be possible.

It would be fun to write reviews for software or devices after becoming an advanced user. My first impression may being unnecessarily negative or undeservedly positive.

Another thing that is nice about the real camera is that I can hand it to someone else. They’ll know right away what to do. I don’t have to worry whether they’ve only used a Windows phone and won’t know how to use mine without some encouragement.

Almost everybody left a little bit ago so I won’t be taking many more pictures.

We’ll head home tomorrow.  First we’ll go to Indy and then Fort Wayne… not the direct route,  but my car is in Indy right now and my sister’s step-grandson needs to be in Indy as well.

This afternoon, my sister left for Cornell to do more research for her history PhD. Part of her studies are about disabilities rights and their evolution. It’s a challenging topic because personal autonomy and desires may not match the expectations of the majority. Most people have their own definition of what is a “valid” life. A doctor or legislator may demand a certain lifestyle as if it was the only one that is acceptable.  On one hand, it is desirable for a person to achieve all that they are capable of, and on the other, a person may choose for themselves to reject that expectation.

It’s so easy to look at a few specific examples of a life and generalize that it applies to everyone.  Life has infinite complexity, so deciding for someone else their needs uses broad brushstrokes. But that ignores the subtleties and nuances where the artist has used the lightest touch… where meaning resides.

IUPUI Capstone

This weekend I went down to IUPUI for the first time.

I’ve been taking LIS classes for a long time, but since they were all online, I didn’t have a need to head down there.

This semester I was had an internship at the Auburn library’s William H. Willinnar Genealogy Center. One of the requirements of the internship is to participate in the Capstone program at the end of the semester.

I got my presentation ready in time for the event and headed down. It was a good experience. I would have liked to have seen what other people had presented, but I didn’t have anyone to spot for me and watch my display so I couldn’t wander off.

I did my best to use some artistic expertise in putting together the display of “Growing a collection through donations and loans.” I had some cream colored cardstock that I put the information on. It took a while to decide what to say and get all of the parts designed and printed up.

I have a bunch of colored paper from the past and I had some that was a nice light green that I put offset from the main text. With the black background of the display, the green really set off the design and made it attractive. I also managed to use color in the text effectively I think. At first I wanted to have a spectrum of colors, but I ended up just using red, blue, green and black which was a lot easier to look at and less busy.

When I got there I felt really inadequate and out of place. Before everything started, I was talking to another Library Science intern who was also there and that helped me feel like I belonged.

One of the people who was taking pictures for the event took several pictures of me talking to people and of the display. Of the people in my room, my material was the most colorful. I’ve been told by family that I’m pretty photogenic, so I hope the photos come out well. Maybe they’ll be up on the Capstone website soon.

I really like the director of the Capstone program. He is really energetic and really funny, in a good way.  I hope I didn’t look like I was laughing at him because I thought he was charming and genuinely entertaining. I couldn’t help but smile while I was watching him in the room where us 4 LIS students were presenting. He showed me his interest in steampunk and his drawings which were a cool surprise.

When I got home, I felt really energized by the experience. I think part of it was being on campus and being around a new group of people.

I had dinner after the presentations with the instructor of the internship, Kym, the department chair, Andrea, and her partner. For some reason, he seemed really familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where. From the conversation we had at dinner, I still couldn’t figure out if I had met him somewhere before and I was too shy to ask.

I’d like to go down to IUPUI more often this semester. I think participating in the university experience in person will enhance my enthusiasm and creativity. Being around other students in person is a lot different then having conversations with them on the course websites.

During the event, I met the professor, Kyle, who is leading my independent study class on privacy. That was nice too. In the past we’d only spoken on the phone or thru email.

For me Capstone wasn’t a high pressure event. However, for all of the other students in the SOIC department, the computer scientists, human computer interaction students, and design students, the Capstone had to succeed or they wouldn’t graduate. For me, it was more an opportunity to promote the library and information science department and try something completely different.

I hope to go to Capstone in the spring as an audience member instead of as a participant. Mathew (the director of Capstone) said there’ll be around 100 Capstones in May. Awesome!