Did you know that not everyone has to have their details published on the electoral roll? This makes sense if you and your family members could face a personal risk if your information was accessible to people who may want to cause you harm.

Kim Dotcom, David Fisher, Justice Winkelmann, the GCSB and the Privacy Commissioner. No, they don’t walk into a bar – although that would be a thing to see - but all are featured in this decision. I won’t be commenting on it, for various obvious reasons, but the decision introduces a novel procedure into civil litigation, and has drawn some comment around the traps already. For example, the lawyer, blogger and journalist, Steven Price, says “the judge got this one flat wrong”. A former Privacy Commissioner, Sir Bruce Slane, has some views. I might not share them and do not endorse them, but I’m happy to provide a platform for our first guest post, from an esteemed and knowledgeable expert in the interests of commentary and debate - Privacy Commissioner John Edwards.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve used our blog to look at the importance of checking an app out before you download it and paying attention to the information the app can access on your phone.

I was honoured recently to speak at the 2nd Latin American International Data Protection Congress in Pereira, Colombia. Pereira is at the heart of Colombia’s famous coffee growing district and, like the rest of the country, is now a safe place to visit. Attendance was feasible as I was already booked to be in California at my own expense and the conference organisers met the additional costs to travel 5,500 km further south.

Google Play recently made a change to the way it handles permissions when you download a new app. Permissions, in app speak, show you what parts of your Android phone the app will have access to. Whether it’s data - like your phone numbers; or hardware - like being able to play sound through your speakers, or access your GPS location, these permissions are generally necessary to help the app run.

The biggest thing in the privacy world just now seems to have exploded into the collective consciousness out of nowhere. For those of you with TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) syndrome, here’s the spoiler. The issue is not as clear cut as you might think. I’d like to hear a range of views about how we should approach this in New Zealand.

Yo - an app so deceptively simple it is regularly dismissed as stupid or pointless - has been headlining the web’s tech news pages recently. For those that aren’t up to speed, Yo allows you to send a one-word message to friends who you have added on Yo. (Guess what that one word message is!)

This week is Connect Smart week. That means you will see and hear about a number of initiatives that underline the need to be cyber-savvy and for people to do more to protect themselves online. The internet is home to networked convenience and fast information but it is also where identity theft, fraud and other kinds of nefarious things happen.