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Teaching Privacy Using Red Team Strategies: An Undergraduate Curriculum

Robert Olson

RIT professor Robert Olson shares an innovative undergraduate curriculum that uses hands-on red team OSINT exercises to teach students personal privacy defense.

Summary

The Challenge of Teaching Abstract Privacy Concepts

Undergraduate students often treat digital privacy as an abstract, theoretical concept until they witness how easily their personal digital footprints can be weaponized.

Adopting Red Team Adversarial Pedagogies

Robert Olson details a curriculum where students perform supervised OSINT reconnaissance and threat modeling on simulated persona targets.

Uncovering Digital Trails and Data Broker Aggregations

Students discover how cross-referencing public voter records, social media geotags, and metadata reveals home addresses, family members, and routine habits.

Empowering Students with Defensive Digital Hygiene

The presentation provides open syllabus modules covering password managers, VPN usage, privacy-preserving search engines, and data broker opt-outs.

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