Privacy: where your data goes
Who collects what about you, what happens to your chatbot conversations, and how to make a company answer you under the law.
A course for people who are keeping their phone and want to understand where facts about them end up. You will be able to draw your own threat model, change the settings that make a difference, and ask a company what it holds on you. This is about data that flows without malice: attackers and scammers are in the Security course.
So far there is only this table of contents. Lessons appear one at a time, and we promise no dates. Feed of new lessons (Atom)
17 lessons, 4 parts
Part 1 Who collects what
Almost nobody is hunting you personally, and facts about you still move through a market with its own players and rules.
- coming soon
What you gave, what was observed, what was inferred
Three kinds of facts about a person, and why the third surprises most: conclusions about your health and income that you never told anyone.
- coming soon
The ad auction in a fraction of a second
While a page opens, facts about you can reach many bidders, and you will never learn who almost all of them are.
- coming soon
Data brokers
Who buys and resells facts about people, where they get them, and what rights you have to get off their lists.
- coming soon
Your phone knows where you have been
How dots on a map turn into your address, your job and your daily routine, and which app permissions make it possible.
- coming soon
Your face and voice as data
You cannot change them like a password: where companies get your face and voice, and where you can say no.
Part 2 What you tell a chatbot
People tell models what they would not tell a doctor, so it is worth knowing what happens to that conversation next.
- coming soon
Does the model train on your conversations
The answer depends on the company and the plan and changes over time, so this lesson teaches you to find it in the service’s own terms.
- coming soon
Where a deleted conversation lives
Who can read it, how long it is kept, and why “delete” does not always mean erase.
- coming soon
What not to paste into a chat
Work documents, test results and other people’s personal data: what to anonymize, what to keep to yourself, and when the risk is no longer only yours.
- coming soon
The assistant that remembers everything
Memory across conversations and access to your mail and files: what gets stored, how to look at it and how to erase it.
Part 3 Your rights
The law gives you more than a privacy policy suggests, though this course’s general information does not replace a lawyer’s advice.
- coming soon
Your rights under GDPR
What GDPR lets you demand of a company, from seeing your data to having it erased, and where those rights have limits.
- coming soon
Where GDPR stops
US state laws, services based abroad and countries with rules of their own: what rights you keep once GDPR no longer reaches.
- coming soon
How to ask a company what it holds on you
A data access request step by step: what to ask for, how long the company has, and what to do if it stalls.
- coming soon
The company stays silent: what next
A complaint to your data protection authority or a state attorney general: what to attach, what to expect, and when to ask a lawyer.
Part 4 Your own calculation
Complete privacy is not for sale, so what matters is deciding what to protect first and how much inconvenience it is worth.
- coming soon
Your personal threat model
What you want to protect, from whom and how much inconvenience you will accept: after that it is clear what to change and what to leave.
- coming soon
The settings that make a difference
A short list of places in your phone, your browser and your chatbot where ten minutes of work shows.
- coming soon
Other people’s data in your hands
Contacts uploaded to an app, photos of friends, a thread handed to a chatbot: how not to decide for other people what they get to keep private.
- coming soon
A look ahead: assistants that see everything
Agents with access to your screen, mail and files: what to ask a service before you give it that access.