Latest revision as of 09:42, 15 September 2015

Anonymisation is the process that ensures users to remain anonymous as they access and use the internet by removing personally identifiable information from the traces they leave behind. Anonymisation can also be supported by encrypting communications and contents exchanged over the internet.

Appropriated technologies are generally recognized as encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, decentralized, people-centred, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally controlled. (most from wikipedia)

Bitcoin is a pseudonymous online payment system based on the name sake cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoins are created through "mining", a process in which users offer their computing power to verify and record payments. Besides mining, bitcoins can be obtained in exchange for different currencies, products, and services.

Bots is a piece of software that runs an automated task over the internet, performing tasks much faster than we can.

Circumvention is the act of bypassing Internet filters to access blocked websites and other Internet services.

Cis-man is a man who is naturally-born as a man and self-identify as a man. "cis" is the opposite of "trans". We can also see cis-women, cis-Gender, cis-men, etc.

Cookies are tiny pieces of data that are stored in our browser when we visit a website. Some cookies are harmless, as they are just used to make browsing easier and quicker, but others, so-called “profiling cookies”, are used to profile users for commercial purposes.

Crowdsource consists in the process of obtaining services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially online communities.

Digital traces includes data that you intentionally create and see — like publicly shared tweets or a blog post on your website—which we commonly call 'content'. It also includes pieces of data that are created about your content that is mostly invisible to us, commonly called 'metadata'. Those traces are almost always passively created, without you necessarily realising it, or consenting to it.

Domain (if you are looking for "Social domain", see "Social networks") The domain name is a component of a URL, the address we write in our browser to access a certain web site. URLs (https://www.wikipedia.org) are formed by a top-level domain name (in our case .org), by a host name (www), and by a second-level domain name (wikipedia), which is what identifies a certain website and is generally called a domain.

Doxing (also written as "doxxing", or "D0xing", a word derived from "Documents", or "Docx") describes tracing or gathering information about someone using sources that are freely available on the internet.

Encryption is a way of using clever mathematics to encrypt, or scramble, information so that it can only be decrypted and read by someone who has a particular piece of information, such as a password or an encryption key.

Feminist hackerspaces are physical spaces created by women, queer and trans* with a set of social norms that they decide collectively (who can be a member, who can be a guest, what are the policies, etc.) and an explicit belief in feminist principles. Feminist hackerspaces provide a place to work on individual and collective projects in a supportive environment.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that, unlike proprietary software, can be freely used, copied, studied and modified and whose source code is openly shared so as to encourage others to voluntarily improve its design.

Gender roles are sets of societal norms dictating what types of behaviors are generally considered acceptable, appropriate or desirable for a person based on their actual or perceived biological sex. These are usually centered around opposing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, although there are myriad exceptions and variations.

Gender queer is a gender variant person whose gender identity is neither male nor female, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders.Often includes a political agenda to challenge gender stereotypes and the gender binary system.

Holistic security are interventions and practices which ensure the agency, safety and well-being of activists and human rights defenders from a more holistic perspective; one which includes the physical, psycho-social and digital aspects of security.

HTTPS (see also TLS/SSL) Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within a connection encrypted by Transport Layer Security or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer. The main motivation for HTTPS is authentication of the visited website and to protect the privacy and integrity of the exchanged data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS).

Hackaton with their general motto "programming till someone drops from exhaustion" are hack events that can mix different groups - like NGOs with hackers - to come up with new approaches to building technology for that group.

Hack nights is a day or night that is dedicated to computer, body, software or hardware hacking. Often hack nights focus on special content, themes and/or demographics. Many women, queer and trans* have tried to organise women-only nights in hackerspaces.

Hacklabs and Hackerspaces are spaces whose communities embrace the hacker ethics, based on the principles of hands-on approach to technologies, sharing, openness, decentralization, and free access to technologies. Both are places where people go to learn how to use technologies, especially computer and internet-related ones, and share their skill with others. Hacklabs, which have basically existed since the advent of the personal computer and whose golden age was the decade around the turn of the millennium, are often located in squatted spaces and occupied social centres. Hackerspaces, the newer generation of such spaces, tend to interface more with the institutional grid through legal entities (associations or foundations), and rent spaces financed through a club-like membership model.

Intersectionality or intersectional feminism argue that feminism cannot be studied, understood, or practiced from a single, immediate, standpoint; understanding requires engagement with culture, class, sexuality, ethnicity, gender and other power structures which engender inequality.

Internet of Things is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity to enable objects to collect and exchange data. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things).

IP address - An IP address (meaning "Internet Protocol address") is a number assigned to each device that connects to the internet. This number has the same function of a physical address: it is needed so that the servers that host the website we want to visit or the service we use can know where to send us the data we are asking for and how to get there.

LGBTQI – A common abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexed community. For a long time, we have seen the acronym LGBTQ. Some started reversing letters to put the emphasis elsewhere such as with GLBTQ or LGTBQ. More and more we see the "I" being added to "LGBTQI" to add Intersex people.

Liberating technologies can be defined as those that are designed mindfully, fairly produced and distributed, are rooted in free and open-source software principles, are not designed for ‘planned obsolescence’, and are built to be secure by design. In the same spirit—but ultimately determined by what users do—that the technologies, systems, and digital services we choose are not designed for or are resistant for use in gender-based violence and surveillance.

Malware is a general term for all malicious software, including viruses, spyware, trojans, and other such threats.

Mansplaining or splaining refers to a form of condescension in which a member of a privileged group explains something to a member of a marginalised group as if the privileged person knows more about it. For instance, a man explaining sexism to a woman, or a white person explaining racism to a black person.

Moniker is also known as a pen name or an avatar. It is a name that you use that is not your legal name.

Online identity is a set of data and features defining how every internet user presents themselves in online communities and web services. Sometimes it can be considered as an actively constructed presentation of oneself and compared to a digital version of a social mask.

Online reputation Reputation is the opinion others have of a person or, in internet, of an identity, that typically results from an evaluation based on a set of criteria shared within a group of people. This evaluation is particularly important in online communities, where it influences the level of trust each of us can have in others.

Passphrase is a sequence of words used to access a computer system, program or data. A passphrase is similar to a password in usage, but is generally longer for added security.

Patriarchy "is a form of mental, social, spiritual, economic and political organization of society produced by the gradual institutionalization of sex-based political relations created, maintained and reinforced by different institutions linked closely together to achieve consensus on the lesser value of women and their roles". By Alda Facio (http://learnwhr.org/wp-content/uploads/D-Facio-What-is-Patriarchy.pdf)

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that, unlike the centralized client-server model, partitions tasks or work loads between peers, thus creating a horizontal network of nodes.

Permaculture is a systems approach that include but are not limited to ecological design, ecological engineering, environmental design, construction and integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture)

Privileges refer to "advantages" people have in society. Privileges refers to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, functional diversity etc. in which a society by default privileges people with certain traits and characteristics. If you are a white cis-men in a western country for instance, changes are you will feel less street harassement than a women of color. People who have privileges in sociey are often not aware of those privileges and how they impact on our economic and social status in society. One cannot try to address issues of privileges without looking at sexism, patriarchy, ableism and racism.

Queer is an umbrella term which embraces a matrix of sexual preferences, orientations, and habits of the not-exclusively-heterosexual-and-monogamous majority. Queer includes lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans*, intersex persons, the radical sex communities, and many other sexually transgressive (underworld) explorers.

Safe space share common values, whether explicit, through a community agreement, or implicit through the sharing of values and enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community.

Self identification is something everyone could do, not just woman or trans, regardless of the biological status. In practice includes trans women as well as people who are born biologically female.

SD card or Secure Digital card is a solid-state storage card where we can save our files just as in other storage devices like USB sticks or hard disks.

Social engineering is the study of human behaviour aimed at identifying and exploiting cognitive biases (or "bugs in the human hardware") in order to attack or manipulate someone, as well as to obtain useful information from them.

Social networking platforms or social media, are online tools that offer several functions to network among users by creating, sharing and exchanging contents (text, images, videos, etc.). They can be commercial (in which case they tend to profile their users for advertising purposes), or autonomous and community-driven.

Social networks are social structures formed by relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, or even entire societies. Each of us belongs to several social networks that compose different social domains and may or may not be interconnected with one another (for instance social domains composed by your social networks with your family, friends, activists or friends colleagues, etc).

Spyware is software that aims to gather information about a person or organization without their knowledge and that may send such information to another entity without the consumer's consent, or that asserts control over a computer without the consumer's knowledge. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware)

STEM is an acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Swarming consists in creating communities of support with your allies in social media spaces where you are likely to encounter harassment. When someone is being targeted, others can quickly be alerted and bombard the harasser with messages. Another option is to have the swarm filling the victim's content stream with lots of new content in order to quickly make the negative, violent content disappear into online history.

TLS/SSL meaning "Transport Layer Security" and its predecessor SSL meaning "Secure Sockets Layer", are cryptographic protocols ensuring that our data cannot be visible as they travel from our computer to the website we are visiting or to the service we are using and vice versa. When we access a website whose url is preceded by HTTPS rather than by HTTP, we are using the TLS/SSL protocol.

Trans* (see also, cis) is a prefix used by those who do not self-identify as a cis gendered person, which means that the gender (or lack of it) that they identify with, doesn't align with the gender they were assigned at birth. The asterisk indicates that trans* is an umbrella term, and implies all the diverse possibilities of gender identities and non-identities (for example, some might be boi, trans woman, gender-fluid, transvestite, genderqueer, two-spirit).

Transgender is a person who lives as a member of a gender other than that expected based on anatomical sex. Sexual orientation varies and is not dependent on gender identity.

Transwoman is an identity label sometimes adopted by male-to-female transsexuals to signify that they are women while still affirming their history as males.

Trolls originally referred to a monster of folk stories and became in the early days of the internet a term to describe users who intentionally sowed discord on IRC and chat forums, often targeting and singling out new users. Today, the word is used more broadly to describe people who target and harass others online.

Web of trust is a set of social norms, protocols and cryptography technologies that enable to build trust on the online world. The web of trust is based on authentication and validation mechanisms to ensure that people, software, online platforms and services are really who they claim to be.