Data Security Jargon

Some data security and privacy terms you need to know:

Social Engineering
The single most common source of data loss, social engineering describes an intrusion that uses human rather than technical interaction, and often involves fooling someone into breaking normal security procedures.

Shoulder Surfing
Shoulder surfing is the process of getting information by stealthy direct observation, such as looking over a person’s shoulder or eavesdropping on a conversation. Shoulder surfing is a common and effective technique to acquire personal information.

Dumpster Diving
Dumpster diving is the act of looking for value in someone else's garbage, an activity which is actually quite legal. In the contexts of computer security and personal privacy, dumpster diving is any technique used to retrieve discarded information that could be helpful in getting into a personal computer or network, or which could be used to steal an identity.

Post-it Peering
The act of finding usable sensitive data such as passwords by scanning someone’s personal notice board or the Post-It notes that they tend to stick around their desk.

You can visit Britefire’s online glossary of terms for an explanation of most internet and e-marketing expressions.

Personalization Desire Outweighs Security Concerns

It is hard to imagine that people who are neurotic about data loss and identity theft would willingly relinquish security for convenience. But time and time again we see consumers acting in a way that might make life harder tomorrow in order to make life easier today. In German supermarkets, people who would refuse to allow their government to capture their fingerprints willingly pay for groceries by pressing their finger on a fingerprint scanner at the till.

The recently publiched "2006 ChoiceStream Personalization Survey" found that over half of the respondents will provide demographic and other personal information in exchange for a personalized online experience.

Part of this is familiarity. Ten years ago when online sites like Amazon.com first started using cookies and subscriber data to customise the shopping experience, people were wary. Suspicions abounded about who might get hold of the information and how it might be abused. But if you don't provide the necessary information, and if you crush your cookies regularly, the online experience can be dry, tedious, and often irrelevant to your interests. Over time, people get accustomed to the personal service and become more willing to give away information. At the same time, they get more sophisticated and discerning, and they actually read privacy policies and make conscious judgement calls about who to trust and who to avoid. The more information consumers are exposed to online and the more decisions they are making online, the more dependent they become on personalisation as a data filter.

According to the report, in the past year, consumer interest in a more personalized experience has increased by 24 percent to 57 percent of respondents. Consumers willing to let a site track clicks, purchases, and other behavior increased by 34 percent in the same period. Concerns over personal data security remained high, with six out of ten people expressing concern.

Not surprisingly, younger age groups have less concern about privacy and more interest in personalisation. Comfort with the norms of social networking sites play a role, with younger people expecting sites to provide personalised recommendations.

original ClickZ article