Posts tagged Privacy
Weekly Wrap-up: Not on Facebook, Google Drive and Path’s Privacy Issues
Feb 11th
Alicia Eler explores the “Not On Facebook” movement. Jon Mitchell explains why Google Drive won’t be a Dropbox clone. Path uploads your entire address book to their servers without permission. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.
After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web – Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web – plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.
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Now is the Time to Quit Facebook
The number of people quitting Facebook is still small, but they are a vocal minority. Alicia Eler explores why they are leaving, shares the farewell stories of a few and explains why they felt a need to band together. Read Now is the Time to Quit Facebook to learn more about the “not on Facebook” movement.
Fabled Google Drive Won’t Be Another Dropbox
Some may be expecting the fabled Google Drive to compare closely to Apple’s iCloud or Dropbox, but Jon Mitchell explains why he expects the long rumored product to be a very different beast. Check out
Fabled Google Drive Won’t Be Another Dropbox to learn more.
The Price of Free: Path Uploads Entire Address Book To Its Servers
Path has gotten a great deal of attention because it has a great user experience, but this week it got some bad press over a privacy issue. You might not expect the app to upload your entire address book to it’s servers, but that’s exactly what one smart hacker discovered. Path has since apologized but there is a great deal of damage done. Is the price of a free app worth the loss of privacy? Learn more about Path’s privacy issue in The Price of Free: Path Uploads Entire Address Book To Its Servers.
From the comments:
Alan Langford – “The open source community has long distinguished between free as in no cost, and free as in freedom. One can expect that anything in the commercial sphere that comes at no monetary cost will do so by restricting one or more freedoms.”
Tiago Sartor – “There’s saying that goes like this: if something is free, then you are the product.”
More Top Posts:
First Glimpses of Office 15 Are Minus the Ribbon
As Microsoft adopts a new usage model with elements gleaned from the “Metro” style, will Office be moving away from the ribbon? The first clips of the new Office in action deliberately obfuscate the answer. More
Since 2009, Mobile Internet Usage Has Doubled Every Year
The growth of the mobile Web is on a steady rise. While pundits throw around words like “explosive” and “outrageous” the more precise word is probably “consistent.” According to analytics firm StatCounter, users accessing the Web through mobile devices has almost doubled every year since 2009. In its latest report, StatCounter says that global Internet usage through mobile devices rose to 8.5%, nearly doubling the 2011 figure of 4.3%. More
New iPhone, iPad and Android Apps for January 2012
2012 started with a flourish of new apps across iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The holiday season is the busiest time of year for app publishers but the follow up in January was equally impressive. That is a testament to the growing app ecosystem and the number of developers starting to program for mobile platforms. We take a look at some of our favorite new apps from last month below. More
Q&A: Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley on What He’s Learning From Twitter and What’s Next
Foursquare, about to celebrate its third birthday, is big but not huge. It has signed up 15 million users, hired over 100 employees and now boasts several million check-ins per day. That is impressive work for three years, but it must keep growing. More
Iran Blocks HTTPS, Cutting Off Gmail, Yahoo and Other Major Sites
The Iranian government isn’t exactly known as a champion of free speech and access to information. Thus, it’s never shocking to hear about Internet censorship in the country, the state of which appears to be getting worse all the time.
Today, news surfaced that the country is blocking access to websites that use HTTPS. That means that a number of popular, secure websites like Google, Gmail, Yahoo and even online banking sites are inaccessible. More
![Microsoft Looks For Ways To Use Kinect In Business Applications [UPDATED]](http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/assets_c/2012/02/shutterstock_microsoft_kinect-thumb-150x100-38510.jpg)
Microsoft Looks For Ways To Use Kinect In Business Applications [UPDATED]
The company launched Kinect for Windows this month, which is the first Kinect sensor licensed for commercial use. Microsoft Dynamics, the company’s unit that develops enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management (CRM) software applications, is currently exploring business scenarios that could benefit from the use of Kinect technology. More
Facebook Bans Breast-Feeding Photos
Breasts. They’re complicated.
Facebook states that breast-feeding pictures are okie dokie, just as long as there’s no “exposed breast” that doesn’t feature the child actively nursing. In other words, if there’s no suckling, there’s no posting. Today breast-feeding activists are using Facebook to coordinate “nurse-ins” outside of of the company’s headquarters worldwide, including its homebase Menlo Park headquarters. More
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Google’s new privacy policy: possibly the most transparent SEO perspective – domain-B
Feb 9th
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Google's new privacy policy: possibly the most transparent SEO perspective
domain-B From an SEO perspective there's nothing new here, although it may well be the most transparent Google has ever been about utilising CTR (click through rate) data in their natural search algorithm. This is something that we at Greenlight have suspected … |
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Privacy Group Sues FTC to Stop New Google Privacy Policy
Feb 8th
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is suing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in the hopes of stopping the new Google privacy policy, which is set to become effective March 1. The complaint was filed today in federal district court.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Path Apologizes For Privacy Mistake. Do You Accept?
Feb 8th
After an enterprising hacker discovered a privacy problem in beloved new social app Path yesterday, its creators have issued an update and an apology. “We commit to you that we will continue to be transparent and always serve you our users, first,” CEO Dave Morin writes.
Path was uploading iPhone users’ address books to its servers without asking. Today’s update, version 2.0.6, now prompts users to opt in to the ‘Add Friends’ feature, which is not mandatory. Path has deleted all the existing contact info from its servers.
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This apology is full of refreshing self-consciousness. “As we continue to expand and grow we will make some mistakes along the way,” Morin reminds us. Everybody makes mistakes. And as we wrote yesterday, this was mostly just a procedural mistake. Path added the feature without asking its users first. If it had only alerted its users before uploading their contacts, most would probably have said “yes.”
There are some additional security measures Path could use with this contact information, as Matt Gemmell suggested in yesterday’s thread with Morin. The app could hash the information locally and then upload it. Path hasn’t taken that step yet, but it assures users that the connection is encrypted, and the data are stored behind a firewall. And now that it’s all opt-in, users are in control again.
So Path recovered as gracefully as possible. Do you accept its apology? Or did yesterday’s revelation do too much damage for you to trust the company again? It’s important to remember that you pay for free apps with your data. They’re going to do what they can to collect it, because that’s how they make money.
They should always ask the user for permission first. Apple requires app developers to ask the user for permission before gathering location data, and perhaps it should do the same for contacts. But the bottom line is that responsibility for user data starts with the user.
How much do you care about privacy when it comes to data like this? Is the price of free apps worth it? Share your responses in the comments.
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Google Screenwise: New Program Pays You To Give Up Privacy & Surf The Web With Chrome
Feb 7th
Google is quietly taking requests from web users who want to get paid to surf the web using the Chrome browser while sharing data with Google. The program is called Screenwise and, though we’re not aware of any official announcement, Google has a signup page at…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Believe It Or Not, There’s An Upside To Diminished Online Privacy
Feb 6th
Sunday’s New York Times was a Luddite’s dream. Tthe paper’s Sunday Review section had three lengthy opinion pieces dedicated to “Life Under Digital Dominance” (their words, not mine), including Evgeny Morozov’s lengthy treatise that social media will kill originality because we’re all too afraid to publicly “like” something on Facebook that our friends don’t like, a plea to adopt European-style rules to keep data private and a particularly threatening piece by Lori Andrews promising sudden cuts in our personal credit lines and troubles obtaining insurance because Facebook is using us.
All three authors make good points, and they are points worth considering for anyone invested in a digital life. But they also brought to mind Reason magazine’s June 2004 cover story – a remarkably poignant preview of the world we now live in. It was also a reminder that a lot of us are okay with the amount of information we choose to share online, and many of us even benefit from giving marketers, friends and co-workers a more complete picture of who we are.
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The 2004 Reason issue was delivered to subscribers in a magazine that had an satellite photo of each subscriber’s home on the cover, which Reason was able to obtain through public data and print with then state-of-the-art technology. As Nick Gillespie wrote in that issue’s Editor’s Note, the issue was dedicated to “describing how many of the popular and convenient transactions we take for granted are the result of readily accessible information that lays you bare to the prying eyes of others.
“Living in a database nation raises innumerable privacy concerns. But it also makes life easier and more prosperous,” he said. “We may have kissed privacy goodbye — and good riddance, too.”
Some of the points raised in the Reason article seem dated nearly eight years later. But the basic premise from the Libertarian journal of political and economic thought remains essentially the same, whether we’re talking about data collected by supermarket loyalty programs in 2004 or Facebook in 2012: “It’s easy to complain about a subjective loss of privacy. It’s more difficult to appreciate how information swapping accelerates economic activity. Like many other aspects of modern society, benefits are dispersed, amounting to a penny saved here or a dollar discounted there. But those sums add up quickly,” Declan McCullagh wrote in the 2004 cover story.
When Is The Last Time You Actually Read A Privacy Policy?
Businesses gathering information on customers and potential customers, as well as employees and potential employees, is nothing new. Mediterranean merchants relied on a social network in the 11th century to track dishonest merchants selling their goods in foreign ports, and, more recently, in 1766, Adam Smith “stressed the importance of a positive reputation, which necessarily means that others have access to information about your past actions and therefore feel they can predict your future behavior.”
What we fear now is not the fact that companies collect the data, but that they collect so much more of it with much greater ease. And we’re also rightfully concerned about who has access to all that data. Most of us have made peace with the idea of SafeWay knowing we prefer chocolate chip over pistachio ice cream, and appreciate the coupons we get for our favorite flavor. But what happens when that data is sold to our health insurer, who ups our premium after deciding we’re at risk for hypertension because of our ice cream consumption?
This is why it becomes important to read those privacy agreements most of us ignore. Frequent check-ins at your favorite pizza place on a restaurant review site may earn you a badge and a number one rating on the site, but is that virtual prize worth it if the site turns that data over to your health insurer? It doesn’t matter if you only go to the pizza place because you like their garden salad (with low-fat dressing on the side), and your insurer won’t necessarily know you run 20 miles a week unless you’re also checking in at the gym on a regular basis.
Striking A Balance Between Privacy And Innovation
None of the Times’ writers outright suggest legislation as a remedy for diminshing privacy, although Somini Sengupta’s look at privacy laws in Europe comes close to advocating such a position, noting that every European country, as well as Canada, Australia and many Latin American countries have laws governing the use of online data. At the very least, there’s an anti-business and, by extension, anti-innovation, tone in his news analysis.
“Europe has come to the conclusion that none of the companies can be trusted,” Simon Davies, the director of the London-based nonprofit Privacy International, told Sengupta. “The European Commission is responding to public demand. There is a growing mood of despondency about the privacy issue.”
Sengupta’s article does not, however, mention that in the United States the civil court system has dealt with egregious privacy law violations not addressed by existing legislation. Likewise, Andrews’s op-ed notes that 93% of us, according to polls, think that Internet companies should always ask for permission before using personal information, without noting that those polls never present the privacy question against the backdrop of more privacy may very well mean higher costs and less innovation.
As a Libertarian journal, Reason predictably took the stance that protecting privacy is largely a matter of personal responsibility. But it’s a message that bears repeating now. It’s a safe bet that the people most concerned with privacy – the domestic abuse victims and the Syrian dissidents mentioned by privacy advocate Rebecca MacKinnon mentions in Sengupta’s article – have taken steps to protect their personal information. And if they haven’t, whose fault is it?
“If you have a democratic society, the point is not to say whatever is good for the majority is all we need,” MacKinnon said.
But turning her argument around, does that mean whatever is needed for the minority is good for the rest of us?
Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.
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Google Won’t Pause New Privacy Policy – Should They Have To?
Feb 3rd
Google refuses to bend to EU regulators, who have asked the company to hold off on rolling out their new privacy policy. In the U.S., Google responded to a letter and attended a closed-door privacy briefing with members of Congress.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says
Feb 3rd
Several members of Congress continued to express reservations about Google’s new privacy policy after a closed-door meeting on Thursday, with one House member saying that Google’s handling of sensitive medical searches may violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Pot (Microsoft) Calls Kettle (Google) Black on Privacy
Feb 2nd
Did you know Microsoft truly puts people first? Instead of having horrible, evil products like Gmail, Google’s search engine, Google Docs, or Google Chrome, Microsoft saves us with Hotmail, Bing, Microsoft Office 365, and Internet Explorer 9.
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Google to Talk Privacy Policy in Private with Congress
Feb 1st
The great Google privacy policy change freak out continues. In the latest developments, Google has defended its changes in a letter to Congress, and will send two Google reps to Washington, D.C., to give a “closed-door briefing” on the new policy.
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