Attorneys General Concerned By Google's New Privacy Policy
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 22, 5:24 PM
Attorneys general from 36 states told Google CEO Larry Page they are concerned by the company's plan to start combining information about signed-in users across a variety of products and services, including Gmail, Android, and YouTube.
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FTC Wants EPIC To Butt Out Of Enforcement Decision
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 21, 5:45 PM
The watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center recently went to court in an attempt to nix Google's new privacy policy. The privacy advocates asked for a court order requiring the FTC to take action against Google before it changes its policy. The FTC, not surprisingly, isn't thrilled that EPIC is seeking a court order against the agency. In papers filed on Friday, the FTC says that outside groups like EPIC shouldn't get to weigh in on the decision about whether to bring an enforcement action.
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Google Gets Around Safari's Privacy-Friendly Default Settings
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 17, 6:31 PM
Shortly after news broke this morning that Google and other companies were using a workaround to drop cookies on Safari users, Interactive Advertising Bureau general counsel Mike Zaneis took to Twitter to express his opinion. "Safari DEFAULT blocking cookies is a technology limitation, not a consumer privacy setting," he wrote. The implication is that Google (and the other ad companies) didn't circumvent users' privacy settings because they hadn't explicitly configured their computers to block third-party cookies. Rather, Apple did so for them. Surely, however, some users browse the Web with Safari precisely because of its privacy settings.
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Ron Paul Camp Presses Claim To Unmask Attack Ad Creator
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 16, 6:12 PM
At the beginning of the year, a Twitter and YouTube user with the screen name NHLiberty4Paul uploaded an attack ad on former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. The clip, titled "Jon Huntsman's values," intersperses questions like "Weak on China? Wonder Why?" and "What's he hiding?" with video footage of the ex-U.S. Ambassador to China candidate speaking Chinese. The ad ends with a screen asking people to support presidential hopeful Ron Paul. Paul, who is famous for his libertarian views, quickly disavowed the clip. His campaign also filed a federal lawsuit alleging that NHLiberty4Paul infringed Paul's trademark, engaged in false advertising, ...
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SEC Says Telecoms Must Allow Shareholders To Vote On Net Neutrality
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 15, 6:09 PM
Last year, net neutrality advocates proposed that shareholders of Verizon, AT&T and Sprint vote to endorse neutrality principles at their annual meetings. The proposals -- by institutional investors as well as individuals like "Mike D." of the Beastie Boys -- call for the telecoms to commit to follow neutrality principles when operating their wireless networks. Specifically, the proposals say that telecoms should promise that they won't degrade or prioritize content based on which company owns it, or who will receive the material.
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NAI: Behavioral Targeting Opt-Outs Nearly Double In 2011
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 14, 5:59 PM
More than 8 million Web users visited the site operated by privacy self-regulatory group Network Advertising Initiative last year, while more than 800,000 opted out of online behavioral advertising, the organization reported today. Those numbers are up considerably since 2010, when around 2.8 million people visited the NAI's site and around 470,000 opted out of behavioral targeting, or receiving ads targeted based on sites they visited.
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Data Broker Accused Of Deceiving Consumers
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 13, 5:25 PM
Privacy company Abine has filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against the data broker BeenVerified for allegedly offering deceptive opt-outs. The company tells consumers that they can opt out of having their information displayed, but then reinstates users' data after only three months, Abine alleges.
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Court Puts Google Privacy Case On Fast Track
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 10, 6:38 PM
The federal court decided this week to fast-track a lawsuit aimed at forcing Google to halt its planned privacy policy revisions. The case was filed on Wednesday by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which is seeking a court order forcing the Federal Trade Commission to take action against Google. EPIC contends that Google's new privacy policy violates Google's settlement with the FTC stemming from the Buzz launch. Among other terms, that agreement requires Google to obtain users' explicit consent before sharing their data more broadly than its privacy policy allowed at the time of collection.
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More Mobile App Privacy Snafus: Hipster Is Uploading Users' Address Books
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 9, 6:13 PM
In retrospect, it was probably inevitable that mobile apps would face a privacy crisis. After all, it's no secret that privacy has never been top-of-mind for tech companies, let alone mobile app developers. Last year, a study by the Future of Privacy Forum found that just 26% of popular paid mobile apps had policies governing how they collect or share personal data. By January that proportion had improved slightly to one in three, while two out of three free apps had privacy policies in January. But, as this week's developments have demonstrated, having a privacy policy doesn't guarantee that companies ...
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Mobile Network Apologizes For Privacy Breach, Deletes Data Collected Without Consent
Posted by Wendy Davis on Feb 8, 7:14 PM
The mobile social network Path landed in the middle of a privacy firestorm this week, thanks to developer Arun Thampi, who learned that the company was uploading users' entire address books to its servers. "I'm not insinuating that Path is doing something nefarious with my address book but I feel quite violated that my address book is being held remotely on a third-party service," Thampi wrote in a post outlining his findings. "I love Path as an iOS app and I think there are some brilliant people working on it, but this seems a little creepy."
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