The ALA Conference coverage is quite phenomenal this year, I'm really digging all the vlogging. I'm still trying to get through all the blog posts and LJ articles but it looks like the issues raised by the Privacy Panel (Dan Roth, Cory Doctrow and Beth Givens) is the big topic on everyones tongues right now. The Shifted Librarian and the Loose Cannon Librarian provided live-blogging coverage of the panel discussion, and the OIF blog has a post linking to a survey and twitter feeds.

When I think of privacy issues, I can't help but think of them on more of a smaller scale then what the panel seemed to be focusing on. On a day-to-day basis, I deal with members (I like that...got a nice ring to it) who are consistently asking me for advice on what their passwords should be for their email address. I'll later help them set up accounts for social networking sites, employment sites, e-government sites, Expedia.com where they'll use the same password. I try to explain that this might not be such a great idea, that having the same password for everything could open them up to all kinds of violations. But they insist that they want to keep it the same because they don't want to forget it. But just think, if someone accidently forgot to log out of their yahoo account on one of our public computers and the next person logged in, someone a little shady and not so trustworthy, would then be able to access their email account, find out the password and think "Mmm, I wonder if they use the same username and password for buying airplane tickets". So, away they go to Expedia.com and what do you know, they have and guess who's buying a free trip to the Bahamas.

These are pretty basic privacy concerns that I think librarians should focus on educating members about, especially if their going to be access their accounts on public computers. Many libraries are now teaching free basic computer courses to the public. This is a perfect time and place to discuss these concerns with your community and help them understand how delicate their life can be online.

In addition, our local Credit Union (of which I happen to be a member) has recently been having some serious fraud issues. My husband recieved two phone calls last week asking him to verify his account information because the CU was "updating" their information. We've been recieving emails like this for several months but the phone calls are something new. While I was waiting at the hairdressers last weekend, the lady next to me said she had recieved one also and she hadn't even had an account with the CU for two years. I wonder whether these would be good opportunities for public libraries to collaborate with other community institutions to help inform the public about privacy concerns. We have meeting space here. Maybe having some sort of workshop where representatives from the Credit Union came to talk about the problems their having, what they're doing about it and what clients can do to protect themselves. After all, not everyone in our community accesses their website. Having a way to connect with them in person would probably be very reassuring to people.