privacy – Looks Like New

Are our health apps negatively impacting us?

MEDLab — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the digital age, it’s hard to resist free conveniences—but are they really free? So much of our data is constantly being bought and sold without our knowledge, making it crucial to find safe alternatives to keep our private information truly private.

On this month’s episode of Looks Like New, hosted by MEDlab fellow Stephanie Abdalla, Anna Muller joins us all the way from Brazil to discuss the importance of data control, especially for individuals with uteruses.

Anna Muller brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation. She is a biomedical specialist in neuroscience and behavior, a health instructor focused on fertility, perception, and hormonal health, as well as a speaker and content producer specializing in menstrual education. Together, Stephanie Abdalla and Anna Muller dive into the world of fertility tracking apps, the risks and realities of data control, and possible safer alternatives—drawing from history, academic discourse, and personal insight.

What does digital privacy mean for young people?

MEDLab — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 16:36:10 +0000

Whether or not we have children of our own, many of us have wondered how we approach their privacy in the digital world. What’s the best way we can approach this increasingly important question? In this episode, MEDLab research fellow Antoinette Kendrick speaks with danah boyd, a leading researcher, scholar, and thought leader in the fields of technology, social media, and youth culture. She is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of the non-profit organization Data & Society, and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University. Her book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens is a foundational text on youth digital culture ,examining the ways teens use social platforms and the societal expectations that follow.

Who Cares About Privacy?

MEDLab — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:07:23 +0000

While digital privacy issues often get a lot of attention and even alarmism, it rarely seems to change behavior. Even if it did, do individual choices really make a difference? Amie Stepanovich is a veteran policy expert and advocate who argues that we need to think about these questions not just as individuals but as a society. She is executive director of Silicon Flatirons a center on technology and law at the University of Colorado Boulder. Before that, she worked in policy roles at Access Now and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.