internet rules

People who are familiar with this blog will know that I occasionally veer off into thoughts and links to do with privacy and security. The other day I was listening to an episode of a podcast called Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons. The episode was about Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. The host, Carey Parker, was interviewing an American lawyer Ruth Carter, who has been spending a lot of time looking into GDPR, and its ramifications for people and businesses in the US.

The episode is fascinating, and it’s clear that I need to do some cleaning up of various online materials as a consequence of GDPR. You can listen to it here if you are interested in GDPR:

americaoutloud.com/gdpr-here-i-come-ready-or-not

At the end Carter gives a little bit of advice about putting anything online. Her rules are:

• imagine that it is appearing on the front page of a newspaper
• imagine that it will be read by your best friend, your worst friend, your mother, and your boss.

I have no idea why people’s mothers – rather than our fathers – should be some kind of litmus test of whether to post something online or not. I imagine it has something to do with mothers being more sensitive than fathers, or some other lame-arse gender thing. Nevertheless, I like the principles of her thinking; a means to ground and help us (and particularly younger people) think through participation online.