[Chapter-delegates] Privacy Article

[Thomas Lowenhaupt]

Thanks Glenn. A most interesting article on the tricks our minds play on 
us. I particularly liked:

    In a study called "Sleights of Privacy," <http://bit.ly/YGVYcN> Mr.
    Acquisti's subjects --- students at Carnegie Mellon --- were divided
    into two sets of two groups. Each group was asked to evaluate
    professors and were given additional questions about cheating. In
    the first set, half were told that only other students could see
    their answers; the others were told that faculty members, as well as
    students, could see the responses. As one might expect, the group
    with student-only viewers was more forthcoming than the group with
    student and faculty viewers. The participants seemed concerned about
    who could see their evaluations.

    With the other set of students, Mr. Acquisti offered the same
    questionnaire --- but played a little trick. After again explaining
    the response rules and procedures, he asked an unrelated question:
    Would they like to sign up to receive information from a college
    network? That little distraction had an impact: This time, the two
    subgroups were almost equally forthcoming in their answers.

    Had the distraction made them forget? No. In exit interviews, they
    remembered the rules, but they behaved as though they didn't. "You
    remember somewhere in your brain," is how Mr. Acquisti put it, "but
    you kind of pay less attention to it."

I wouldn't be surprised if researchers weren't literally looking into 
brains with MRI-like machines to develop more effective tricks of this 
type. How society educates / warns / notifies about these "tricks to 
humanity" on the Net should perhaps be a topic for investigation by the 
Internet Society.

Best,

Tom


On 4/1/2013 9:10 AM, Glenn McKnight wrote:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/technology/web-privacy-and-how-consumers-let-down-their-guard.html?hp&_r=0
>
> Glenn McKnight
> mcknight.glenn at gmail.com <mailto:mcknight.glenn at gmail.com>
> skype  gmcknight
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> Http://www.globalcatalysts.com
> http://newsocialmedia.wordpress.com
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