Choose Privacy Week

May 1-7 is Choose Privacy Week. We live in an information age. And knowledge is power. But the technology that allows us access to a wealth of information also facilitates surveillance, with the power to collect and mine personal information.

This year's theme for choose Privacy Week is "Who's Reading the Reader." Online and digital technologies have given corporations and governments alike the ability to track, record, and monitor our communications and our reading  habits. You can replace the word reading with searching, surfing, or viewing. Someone, somewhere, is watching.

Perhaps the watcher only wants to hone their advertisements so you, and other consumers, will buy more of their product. But the convenience of site 'remembering' information about us comes in exchange for the loss of privacy.

To learn more about the issue and how you can protect your privacy, take a look at the Choose Privacy Blog. Your privacy depends on YOU learning how and when to search safely. It depends on YOU actively deciding what information about you to allow sites to retain. It depends on YOU having secure passwords.

Choose Privacy Week is an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association designed to encourage critical thinking and informed choices about privacy.