by Janus Boye
We are always thinking about what our company needs to do right in the digital space, but what about our personal selves? What do we need to do to have integrity?
If you are looking for a set of digital policy actions to take right now, Kristina Podnar shared her advice on the topic in our recent member conference call.
Your company has digital policies. Do you?
As Kristina said in the opening:
Policy is about risk taking
Just like companies put policies in place to reduce risk, your own digital policies are meant to keep you safe. She specifically mentioned how to manage passwords, using two-factor authentication and recommended the usage of password managers. With so many websites expecting a login and personal usage across devices, how you deal with passwords is the first line of defence.
The discussion also covered how we use social media and appear on different websites. Kristina reminded us that impressions last and encouraged us to be mindful of how we interact and how we might maintain separate work and private personas.
She also covered copyright, a topic that’s also close to my heart. It’s so easy to search online for a fitting photo or illustration to use for that blog post or social media post, but be mindful of who actually owns the rights for the photos you use. You don’t want to get in unnecessary trouble.
How to balance privacy concerns vs. having fun and helping fight the pandemic
In the Q&A part of the call, we started the conversation on the newly arrived Facebook avatars. Is this just a harmless fun addition to Facebook? Kristina was quite clear that this is the next step in AI & self-profiling.
With some good input from Hilary Marsh, the conversation went onwards to the real issue on the table at the moment: How does covid-19 and the need for things like contact tracing intersect with our need for protecting our personal data?
Martin Frederiksen, one of the co-authors of the Ethical Design Handbook, shared the helpful tip to use unique email addresses when you create user profiles. This means you can easily trace back when issues happen. Many email providers allow you to simply add a + sign to create a free email address, like this one jb+podnar@boye-co.com. Read more in this field guide: How to Use the Infinite Number of Email Addresses Gmail Gives You
As it was said in the call, none of us fully understand how our data is really being used, so we need to balance risk vs. opportunity.
Lean more about your own digital policies
You can download the slides from the call or watch the entire 28-minute recording below. Kristina also shared this example: Nostalgic Photo Sharing Challenges Come With Privacy Concerns, Experts Say.
The topic of policies is a regular topic in our peer groups, which meets in person in North America and Europe.