Blog

Jul 11, 2019
4 min

Are You Ready for the Data New Deal?

It’s pretty hard to listen to anything about climate change, at least in the United States, and not hear something about the Green New Deal. Popularized most recently by progressive democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, thinkers and politicians have been advancing some form of a Green New Deal for decades. Jill Stein set a version of the Green New Deal as her cornerstone platform piece when she ran for president in 2012 and 2016, and credits Howie Hawk

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aaross25

Sep 21, 2018
3 min

New Insights into Teen Screen Time

How much do you really know about teen attitudes toward their devices and the role social media plays in their lives? Pop culture often simplifies our perceptions of younger generations and the complex relationship they have with our networked world, but seldom do we see a deeper dive into the full range of issues. Fortunately, there are ongoing research projects designed to tackle questions of device attachment, distraction, habits, and mental health. In August 2018, the Pew

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Being Mindful of the Impacts of a Digital Life

aaross25

Jul 13, 2018
2 min

Being Mindful of the Impacts of a Digital Life

In the early days of the web, the acronym “IRL” was frequently used to differentiate things “In Real Life” versus online. As the Internet expands into every corner of our world, the border between the actual and the virtual grows ever fainter. Social media in particular has hastened this erasure of the line between our physical versus digital lives. Is this a good thing? Was the border between the physical and digital life false to begin with? What are the implications of our

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Inclusion Riders and the Mindful Use of Influence

aaross25

Mar 16, 2018
2 min

Inclusion Riders and the Mindful Use of Influence

It was McDormand’s parting shot, a chance to bring a relatively obscure legal term into the zeitgeist’s spotlight. After an impassioned speech championing the call for diversity in Hollywood, McDormand raised the awareness of everyone in the room about something they could do to promote a more fair and equitable hiring situation. A rider is defined as “attachment, schedule, amendment, or other writing that is annexed (added) to a document in order to modify it.” Riders are us

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Attention: You Are Now Entering a “No Phone Zone”

aaross25

Feb 16, 2018
3 min

Attention: You Are Now Entering a “No Phone Zone”

If you dream of a whole day without your digital device at hand, you’re probably like a lot of people who feel their smartphone has taken over their attention span. The idea of a vacation from notifications, alerts, and constant refreshing can seem like an impossible fantasy. But what if someone forced you into a “no phone zone” for a few hours? Phone-free spaces are virtually impossible to create, which is why the company Yondr has developed a physical system for locking dow

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Physical Fitness vs. Privacy Fitness: Location Data Risks

aaross25

Feb 2, 2018
4 min

Physical Fitness vs. Privacy Fitness: Location Data Risks

The upsides of GPS tracking are obvious to anyone who remembers the days of flipping one-handed through a Rand McNally Atlas while driving. Over time, the many eyes in the sky have helped refine our sense of place on this planet, allowing us to plot our moves in detail. And with the rise of tiny GPS-enabled wearables, we’ve entered an age when getting lost is much harder than finding our way. But as many are finding out, location data cuts both ways. Depending on how the tech

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aaross25

Aug 25, 2017
4 min

A Mindful Approach to Mentoring

While I often promote mindfulness as a core tenet of a healthy privacy practice, there are other ways to bring mindfulness into our professional lives. This week I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to the value of mentoring. We have all benefitted from mentors. It is easy to let the demands of a busy professional life eclipse our memory of those who helped us on our journey and temporarily blind us to the opportunity to pay it forward. By pausing, reflecting gratefull

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aaross25

Mar 24, 2017
4 min

Best Practices for Password Mindfulness

The humble password remains central to a healthy privacy practice. Like a mantra which calms the mind and centers our concentration, the password is a fundamental part of cybersecurity. The integrity of our passwords can go a long way towards protecting us from fraud and identity theft. But our passwords are only as effective as we make them. Unlike a mantra, which is simple and memorable, our passwords need to be complex and strong. If you’ve taken password security for gran

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Mindful Living Through the Intelligent Use of Technology

aaross25

Jun 17, 2016
4 min

Mindful Living Through the Intelligent Use of Technology

When I launched The Privacy Guru blog in 2014, I sought to help people bring their intellect and awareness together in order to make mindful choices about online privacy and technology use. Along the way, I’ve shared tools and techniques to demystify complex privacy issues in order to make it easier for you to make informed decisions aligned with your personal values. In the spirit of this continuing mission, I’d like to share some practical tips and perspectives this week fo

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New Tools to Mindfully Manage Your Privacy

aaross25

Nov 20, 2015
4 min

New Tools to Mindfully Manage Your Privacy

Every day we use powerful technology to exercise our creativity, inform our understanding of the world, and take advantage of modern conveniences. Going without it is almost unimaginable. Engineered to be fast, easy-to-use, and ubiquitous, the complexity of this technology is largely invisible. Indeed, its widespread adoption depends upon how seamlessly it can be integrated into our lives. And herein lies a challenge. The seemingly simplicity of new technology also obscures

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Taking Retreat as Part of Our Privacy Practice

aaross25

Jun 26, 2015
3 min

Taking Retreat as Part of Our Privacy Practice

[Tassajara] I recently attended a yoga and meditation retreat at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center led by Bay Area yoga teacher James Higgins and Austin-based Buddhist priest Unzan Mako Voelkel. Located in the Ventana Wilderness of the Los Padres National Forest near Carmel Valley, Tassajara Zen Center was the first Zen training monastery established outside of Japan. Tassajara was founded in 1966 by Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Buddhist priest and author of Zen Mind, Beginners

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aaross25

Mar 6, 2015
3 min

Honing Your Privacy Practice

Developing our privacy awareness and privacy practice is like any new skill – it requires regular and diligent exercise to improve our proficiency. Through repeated effort we can hone our privacy skills to guide our online privacy choices and make our interactions with technology more thoughtful and informed. The Beginner’s Mind and the Fundamentals of a Privacy Practice In mindfulness training, we start with “beginner’s mind.” This attitude enables a fresh outlook without p

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aaross25

Feb 20, 2015
2 min

Using Privacy Techniques to “Opt-in” in to Mindfulness

By now, we’re all familiar with the language of marketing permission standards – opting-in and opting-out. To “opt-in” requires our affirmative consent. No action is taken without express permission. With “opt-out” we’re automatically enrolled in some form of notification or communication, and the action continues until we change our preferences or unsubscribe. User choice is paramount when it comes to email marketing compliance and respecting privacy rights. But we can also

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Mindful Living: Balancing Your Online and Offline Life

aaross25

Jul 25, 2014
4 min

Mindful Living: Balancing Your Online and Offline Life

“We have to really educate ourselves in a way about who we are, what our real identity is.” -Deepak Chopra The age old philosophical question “Who am I?” has become even more difficult in our modern age. How do we define our identity “IRL” (the acronym for ‘in real life’)? Do we have a separate self apart from our digital or user profile? Do we further split our online personality across different platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest? How do we maintain authenti

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aaross25

Mar 21, 2014
6 min

Anonymous App Round-up Part 2: Five Tips for Mindful Messaging

In this two-part series, we’re profiling several popular anonymous messaging platforms and discussing what to consider when interacting with them. In part one we surveyed the field and provided a guide for comparing services. Here in part two we’re talking about an approach to make mindful messaging part of your privacy practice. Why are anonymous messaging apps so appealing? Some use these apps as a release valve, an online confessional, a way to express themselves in ways t

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- Deborah Davis

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