Anti-Forensics and Digital Privacy
This Open Educational Resource (OER) is focused on digital privacy, which relates to the protection of personal information that is stored on, collected by, shared by, inferred by, or otherwise processed by any kind of computing device. Devices that impact digital privacy are everywhere and include our computers, mobile phones, vehicles, appliances, and so-called “smart” devices. These devices are all capable of collecting vast amounts of information about their human users, and any device with a network connection is capable of sharing that information with any other device, person, or company.
Thanks to the proliferation of these digital devices, digital privacy and consumer privacy are now effectively the same concept. Controlling which companies have access to individual pieces of personal information is now a complex exercise in understanding what machines, apps, and services are collecting and sharing that data. Limiting this collection and sharing is extremely difficult due to the lack of effective government regulation, intentionally misleading “privacy policies,” and the ever-increasing trend to make devices that have no real need for connectivity “cloud-connected.”
By reading and understanding the materials in this OER, you will develop an understanding of the ways in which your personal information can be acquired, stored, shared, sold, and leaked. You will also learn some practices for protecting your personal privacy. The foundation of regaining and protecting privacy is data minimization, or the avoidance of creating a shareable digital record in the first place. Data minimization is an example of an anti-forensic technique – one that is designed to create difficulty for anyone trying to discover your personal information.
OER Contents
In Revision
During the Spring 2025 semester, I am revising and reorganizing the following pages. The revised links will be moved up into the Contents section of the page as I complete this work.