Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Matt Bury -
Number of replies: 13
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Hi Moodlers,

While co-authoring an article about the ethics and practicalities of elearning on the WWW, I'm becoming increasingly aware of how social networking sites are finding new and intrusive ways of gathering users' data from 3rd party sites (surveilance).

The most obvious are analytics, e.g. Google Analytics, but there are other less obvious techniques too. Have you thought about these:

Share buttons - Dont' just make it convenient to send a link to your friend(s), they also track users' browsing behaviour just like analytics. And then that's combined with click-through data for your friend(s) to share their web browsing habits them.

Social networking apps - A Facebook or Google app embedding on an LMS page basically shares your learners' and teachers' data and browsing habits with Facebook or Google whether or not they have Facebook or Google accounts.

In my opinion, words like "analytics" and "data mining" are euphamisms for surveilance. I suspect that if we require learners to enroll on their LMS' or learners face penalties or disadvantages by not enrolling, we are infringing on learners' and teachers' human rights. In the real world, we'd normally need a judge to sign a court order to place people under surveilance. In other words, we're compelling learners and teachers to share their data and browsing habits with 3rd parties, usually without informing them that we're doing so. Even if it isn't a legal issue, I think it's certainly a moral one.

So shouldn't Moodle plugins like these some with a strong warning?

Looking through the plugins repository, here's a few that look suspect:

If you use Firefox as you web browser, there's a neat little extension that blocks and displays surveilance software. Pretty good for raising awareness: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/?src=search

What do you think? Am I being melodramtic?

Looking forward to your responses smile

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Martin Dougiamas -
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I don't think you're being melodramatic.

I've been worrying a lot about these issues in the wider sense since Hotmail started.  I'm really not a tinfoilhat conspiracy person but it's very clear that Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are doing everything they can to amass ever-more-detailed dossiers on their users by combining data from an ever-widening amount of sources.  And have you seen how pushy the Google Toolbar is becoming?

The purposes of all that and the effects on our society can be debated, but we certainly should all be informed that it is happening.   I can recommend the TACO extension for Firefox - try it out and see how much tracking is going on these days.

A field in the Moodle plugins database to indicate that the software contains tracking code is an excellent idea.  I've added MDLSITE-1585 to the list.

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Matt Bury -
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Thanks Martin!

I've voted for it in the tracker too. Hopefully, I can publish the joint article I mentioned soon to raise awareness further. Any help with user tracking detection, suggesting learner and teacher awareness strategies, the best ways to ensure that all users are well informed, etc. would be welcome.

I've installed the TACO extension. It appears to block more than Ghostery and seems to work on actively maintained black lists too. It's less intrusive than Ghostery too. Thanks! smile

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Paul Ganderton -
Thank you for posting this Mat. I must admit that it is not something I had considered before but as I add more and more to my Moodle courses I feel I need to be more aware of what is happening. They do say that Google gives search for free because of the huge value it gathers from our user data which it can then sell on! Perhaps I can give my perspective on it from someone working in the NSW state system. The state authority is very clear about links to social networks and we have some heavy policies in place. For this reason we need to be careful, "duty of care" etc! there is another dimension that is worth considering. We have a number of programs focussing on digital citizenship. Such an issue would make an ideal case study for our students. In sum, I am alert but not alarmed. I'll post the URL of this thread on our internal social media site and report back as to the responses I get. Thanks for raising this. I'll also head over to Martin's link and vote if needed. Thanks also Mat and Martin for the FF extensions. I'll get our people to check them out. Sadly, the state mandates IE so we might have issues with the wider student body!
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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Donal O' Mahony -

Thanks Matt for raising this important issue - I hope that you paper is published and that we get a chance to read it!

You ask a great question and I am not sure how many teachers actually understand the whole concept of their students data being trawled.

Paul in a further response talks about digital citizenship education - this is key and wholly undeveloped here in Ireland.

I had a look at those two FF extensions in the discussion thread, Open Taco is really interesting - it was an eye-opener for me to see how sites want to track my movements.

Martin is right about the data gathering but we must do more about citizen awareness of what happens when we browse online.................................

This of course is not just the responsibility of educators

 

Donal O Mahony

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
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Hi Matt

German data protection and privacy law defines that collecting and storing user data requires at first information and acceptance by user. Tools like Google analytics on web sites break the German law because they catch data without asking users. 

Same happens for several other tools.  Data protection and privacy for schools is stronger than for other fields of learning. All types of data transfer to external tools is generally critical.

 

ralf

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Matt

Thanks for pointing out this issue.

I know of this mass hysteria. As long as it remains to the individuals, that is their business. But nobdy should force or allure others, not to mention our own students!

But I see, that is only wishful thinking: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=189378#p835273
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Matt Bury -
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Hi,

Sorry for the delay. Here's the article: http://blog.matbury.com/2011/12/11/a-thorny-issue-protecting-teachers-and-learners-right-to-privacy/

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Hi Matt (and Jeffrey)

Solid work, congrats!

I've noted that you had an illustrious visitor - the first comment, I mean.
wink



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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Glenys Hanson -

Wow! Richard Stallman!

This little groupie is impressed.

 

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Talking of Stallman, here is a strong message: http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right_All_Along.

As told by Cory Doctorow at 28C3: http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html (linked in the article above). In case things move too fast, there is a transcript https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md.

A common question the course creators ask, "How can I stop the participants copying my course material?", is also discussed there.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Matt Bury -
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Hey yeah!

I emailed him with a preview of the article to get his take on it. I got all excited when he responded.

St. iGNUcius commented on my blog!

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Are you concerned about social networking sites trawling your learners' data?

by Donal O' Mahony -

Thanks Matt for publishing that. I will publicise it here in Ireland in the next weer or so. Kind Regards....

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