Projects

Federated Single Sign On for Publishers

Facebook Connect is a Single Sign On (SSO) tool. If you are logged in to Facebook, you can use Facebook Connect to easily sign in to many other sites. That saves you time, as you don’t have to create a log-in and password for every site you visit. Facebook benefits because it can now track everywhere you go and sell that information to advertisers.

Some people may not want to be tracked across the web. Others may worry about a data breach because Facebook now holds all their data. A Federated Single Sign On provides a solution to both concerns while providing the same benefits as Facebook Connect.

Like Facebook Connect, our Single Sign On will enable you to register with one publisher and yet easily sign in to most other publishers, without having to register. What’s different is that instead of registering with one central entity, you will register with your most trusted publisher–perhaps your local news outlet. You will specify exactly whether you are or are not willing to share data about your browsing history when you sign in. You will be “authenticated” by the organization you trust, and then your information will be anonymized. Now, when you go to other publishers, they will not know your name or email address–only that you are a real person coming to their site.

Privacytown

Privacytown is an experiment to help news organizations become privacy advocates for their communities, and in so doing begin to reach new readers, viewers and users with trustworthy services — and offers. Privacytown is a service journalism and customer-support project where news providers cooperate with local public-interest organizations.

The initiative involves three pieces:

  • Public education with the help of libraries, schools, civic organizations, about the danger to democracy from the loss of personal privacy.
  • Helping publishers collect data that will show their advertisers the value of their identified, first-party human users rather than user “impressions” that may be nothing more than one automated computer BOT clicking on another.
  • Helping publishers explain to the public the value of joining with the trusted local media outlets in an effort to better manage their privacy and identity.

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