Workshops during the German
Online Research 04
1.) title of the workshop:
Hidden data collection on the Internet
2.) duration of the workshop:
2 times 90 minutes, 29 March + 01 April
3.) workshop fees:
40 resp. 20 Euro
4.) target groups:
The workshops addresses people from both industry
(market research, opinion research marketing)
and academia (psychology, economics, political
science, sociology, pedagogics)
5.) Is the workshop prepared for an exclusively
German language or an international audience?
The materials distributed among participants of
the workshop (booklet, CD-ROM) will be in English.
6.) workshop language:
Depending on language preferences of the participants
the workshop language be either English or German.
7.) Description of the content of the workshop:
Non-reactive collection is an umbrella term that
refers to all kinds of methods used for hidden
data collection. Subjects who do not know that
their behavior is investigated or observed, are
often expected not to react to this analysis (e.g.,
by impression management). Thus, these techniques
are deployed on the assumption that subjects investigated
will then exhibit their “true” behavior.
Non-reactive data collection on the Internet occupies
a firm position in all post-modern conspiracy
theories related to secret services and companies
that act as global players. But like any other
type of data collection, non-reaction data collection
is limited and and will only elicit a tiny fraction
of the data that could be collected about a person.
However, once combined with other sources of information
that may or may not be freely available on the
market, data collected in a non-reactive fashion
will reveal insights into persons that severely
affect privacy of Internet users and that can
be employed for economical purposes. A well-known
case in point is spamming, when non-directive
data-collection is used to draw a distinction
between hot addresses and cold addresses. While
the public attention is usually narrowed down
to cookies, there is already a large and quite
diverse array of techniques and tool in use that
can be put to practice alternatively or incrementally
like, e.g., covert time measurement, Internet
monitoring software, session-IDs/non persistent
cookies, logfiles, web Beacons/Web Bugs/Clear
Gifs or Spyware.
Non-reactive data collection has many different
aspects that range from purely technical and nerd-enjoying
gadgets over economical strategies to privacy.
For this reason we focus on the topics mentioned
below:
A) Methodology and Technologies of Non-Reactive
Data Collection
B) Combining Mass Data and Publicly Available
Data
C) Legal Aspects of Non -Reaktive Data Collection
D) Technical Devices to Prevent Non-Reactive Data
Collection
In the workshop, knowledge about non-reactive
data collection is communicated via talks, software-demonstrations
and exercises. For this reason, it is recommended
that every participant brings his or her own notebook
to the workshop. However, we will try to find
a solution for those whishing to attend without
an notebook. Participants of the workshop will
be provided with a booklet and a CD-ROM that covers
an up-and-running collection of software tools
to be used for non-reactive data collection. This
will be made possible by using an Apache-based
client-server architecture via CD-ROM that can
be used without any installation on the side of
the participants.
8.) goals of the workshop:
Participants will learn the methodology and the
techniques used for non-reactive data elicitation
and collect hand-on experience in using them.
Ethical and legal aspects of non-reactive data
collection will also be introduced.
9.) necessary previous knowledge:
General Internet literacy is a must, knowledge
about HTML is highly recommended and knowing the
basics of JavaScript would be nice.
10.) literature that has to be read for participation:
11.) additional literature
12.) information about the workshop organizer:
Dr. Dietmar Janetzko and Roman Kennke are working
at the Institute of Computer Science and Social
Research at the University of Freiburg/Germany.
Topics of their work are methods of online research,
knowledge management and data mining.
13.) email address for registration of participants:
dietmar@cognition.iig.uni-freiburg.de
+ u.matzat@tm.tue.nl