Cybercast Oregon is supported by Mount Hood Community College Small Business Development Center, where they work every day to open opportunities for the entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors. You can get started on your quest to business success HERE. 

You may feel a twinge of guilt as you mindlessly hit “Agree” to yet another endless stretch of legal garble known as “Terms of Service” – hoping you’re not signing away anything too important. And besides, researchers estimate it would take 76 hours a year to read all the user agreements we’re offered.

But whether you’re downloading a fresh app or activating a new device, odds are you’ve just agreed to be surveilled in some way.

When the tech is so addictive, the apps so fun, and the programs so useful, it’s hard to turn them down at the price of our privacy. So we sign it away all the time, reasoning that, at worst, we’ll just receive more targeted ads.

This short-term reasoning flies in the face of a recent Pew Research study indicating the vast majority of Americans say controlling who has access to their information is “very important” to them. This the “privacy paradox” – agreeing to trade our information against the chance that our data will be collected, sold, and used to profit those interested in meddling with our lives, choices and freedoms.

It’s a gamble in a game nearly every technology user agrees to play. So – aside from opting out entirely – what can we do?

Great questions – and we have answers. Listen to the episode here:

This episode is for you if…

  • You’re curious about the basics of online privacy.
  • You want to better understand what data is tracked, by whom, and why.
  • You want to know how your data is used after it’s gathered.
  • You want to learn practical steps for protecting your privacy, and how to stay alert to privacy violations.

Cybercast Oregon is hosted by Kedma Ough, director at Mt. Hood Community College’s SBDC. Joining Kedma in the for this episode are three experts:

Selena Deckelmann  | LinkedIn

Selena is a software developer and engineering manager, and specializes in open source software and product management. She’s an internationally recognized speaker on open source, PostgreSQL and developer community.

Lewis Howell  | LinkedIn

From startups to Fortune 10, and with over 20 years in technology, Lewis enjoys working with businesses to optimize IT operations, implement defense in depth measures and align technology with key business initiatives.

Greg Stromire  | LinkedIn

Greg is a software engineer with experience programming at the scale of modern web services. He’s developed for both local and international R&D shops, and really just wants all our devices to communicate better together.

Cybercast Oregon is supported by Mount Hood Community College Small Business Development Center, where they work every day to open opportunities for the entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors. You can get started on your quest to business success HERE. 

 

 

 

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