Why You Should Maybe Be Intentionally Vague on the Internet or Something

On the internet, via our cell phones, on our social networks -- we're constantly leaving a trail of digital information everywhere we go. Our guests suggest ways to be "deliberately ambiguous" online in order to keep your personal business private.

Helen Nissenbaum, professor of Media, Culture, and Communication and Computer Science at New York University and one of the developers of the TrackMeNot software, and Finn Brunton, assistant professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU Steinhardt, discuss these ideas in a book they co-authored: Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest (The MIT Press, 2015).

"We should be able to push back at the wholesale use of our information." Finn Brunton + Helen Nissenbaum pic.twitter.com/veOUjmnMsU

— Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) December 2, 2015