Posts tagged Violating
Google Could Be Fined $10 Million for Violating Safari’s Privacy Settings
May 4th
Bloomberg reports that Google is negotiating with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the size of a fine for violating the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser. The fine could amount to $10 million or more. By comparison, Google’s latest FCC fine for public Wi-Fi data collection was a mere $25,000. What did Google do wrong?
The FTC’s job is to protect consumers from “unfair and deceptive” practices. Bloomberg reported that this would be the FTC’s first fine for Internet privacy. We found earlier precedent for this. Still, “unfair and deceptive” sounds about right. Google used a loophole to get around Safari’s default settings, which, while not technically difficult, was deceptive to the user.
Google, like many ad companies, uses browser cookies to track its users around the Web and better target ads to them. Cookies are set by the site you’re on, but some cookies allow third parties to set a tracking cookie through them.
The default setting for Apple’s Safari browser is to only accept cookies from sites to which you navigate, blocking third-party cookies. Google is one of several ad companies that routed around the setting by placing cookies on the domain you visit and using them to track you from their own domains.
What’s So Bad About That?
Web companies are tracking us everywhere unless we block all cookies, so one might be tempted to say, “So what?” It’s the default setting to allow some cookies, and if people are concerned about privacy, they should change the setting to block cookies. What’s so bad about ad tracking, anyway?
But there are several particulars to the Google example that might give you pause. For one thing, you didn’t have to be a logged-in Google user for it to track you this way. Logged-in users can set their account preferences not to track them, but there’s nothing non-Google users could do to opt out.
This kind of tracking was not a common practice, either. Jonathan Mayer at Web Policy found only four companies doing this, and they all stopped when Google got busted.
Finally, there’s the deception part. Apple makes it quite clear that its default setting is intended to block ad tracking. Even if Google’s tracking is not wrong in and of itself, Google was willingly changing Apple’s intended user experience. That should be between Apple and its users.
At the time, Google’s excuse was that its users had “opted to see personalized ads” by using its services, so it was fine to honor those preferences over Safari’s. But that ignores the people who don’t have Google accounts and were still tracked.
Furthermore, Google’s documentation used to say that Safari’s default setting “effectively accomplishes the same thing” as opting out via one’s Google account, but that’s now gone from Google’s help page.
A Speeding Ticket
When Google gets fined $25,000 for snooping on people’s home Wi-Fi networks, that’s just silly. A $10 million (or more) fine is a much more stern warning. But that’s just a fraction of a percent of its quarterly profits. It’s like giving Google a speeding ticket.
You may not care about ad tracking in and of itself, but the slope is far too slippery to let Google off the hook for this one. It shouldn’t have the right to intervene in the user experience of another company by deliberately routing around its privacy settings.
Image via Shutterstock
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How Pinterest Uses Your Content Without Violating Copyright Laws
Feb 1st
Pinterest, the increasingly popular pinboarding social network, is able to present a visually arresting interface in large part by using copyrighted images pinned by users.
“It’s a huge concern for creative bloggers,” said Amy Anderson, who blogs on the arts and crafts site Crafter Minds. “I don’t think Pinterest does anything to help protect copyright besides removing content when people ask.”
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Pinterest is able to avoid violating U.S. copyright laws thanks to a provision in the Internet Service Providers Act, which gives immunity to sites that publish information provided by others, according to Aaron Messing, an associate with OlenderFeldman LLP in New Jersey. As long as Pinterest continues to comply with a provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that requires it to remove content when asked by the copyright owner, users are free to continue pinning any images they find on the Internet.
Pinterest did not respond to a request for comment, but its Web site has instructions for requesting the removal of copyrighted content.
“If they were manually showcasing content and/or putting this content up themselves, they would definitely be in violation and break their protections,” Get.com co-founder Steven Fruchter said in an email. “Since their users are the ones ‘pinning’ content, which is then downloaded and served via Pinterest’s servers, they are considered a user-generated site, which only needs to take down content after they receive a take down notice by the copyright holder.”
Among many Pinterest users, as well as several artists who have had work pinned on the site, a code for giving proper credit is developing. Artist Laura C. George said Pinterest has no way of knowing if links tied to images link back to the original artists’ Web site, but so far Pinterest users have been better about giving credit than Tumblr.
“That being said, it’s still awful that I might discover a new painter on Pinterest and not be able to find them. To not know their name or have their website,” she said. “It’s truly an awful situation…it seems impossible to enforce this type of rule on such a huge site with thousands of members and billions of pins. They would have to check the link to every ‘original’ pin and research to make sure it was the original. That’s insane.”
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Google Chrome Penalized for Violating Quality Guidelines
Jan 4th
When Google recently hired two top marketing agencies to promote the Chrome web browser using video content, Google assumed that the promotion would be conducted in a manner that was consistent with its own quality guidelines. However, the marketing campaign violated Google’s own rules when it paid bloggers to post “reviews” of the web browser [...]
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Disney to Pay $3 Million Settlement for Violating Children’s Online Privacy
May 15th
The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay a $3 million settlement stemming from charges that online virtual worlds once operated by Playdom, now a Disney subsidiary, violated the Federal Trade Commission rules designed to protect the online privacy of children under age 13.
According to the FTC, several Playdom sites that were aimed at young audiences illegally collected and then disclosed personal data in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). These sites included Pony Stars, 2 Moons, 9 Dragons, Age of Lore, and My DIva Doll. The FTC complaint says that some 821,000 children registered with Pony Stars between 2006 and 2009 and another 403,000 signed up for Playdom’s other online virtual worlds. These sites collected children’s names, ages, and email addresses and allowed them to post that personal information publicly online — including their real names and locations. The FTC charged that the company failed to get parents’ consent before collecting or disclosing this information.
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The sites in question were created by Acclaim Games, which were acquired by Playdom in May 2010. Playdom, in turn, was acquired by Disney in August 2010, and by that time many of the games were shut down or transferred to offshore operators.
A Disney spokesperson said in a statement that it was “pleased that Playdom and the FTC have now resolved this matter amicably.”
The announcement of the settlement coincides with the introduction of legislation by Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that will update online protections for children. Indeed, the legislation that governs children’s online privacy, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, was first passed in 1998. 1998 – that’s eons ago in Internet years. A world pre-Playdom, pre-Facebook, and even pre-Google. (Well, the search engine was actually incorporated that year.)
The updated COPPA legistation, called the “Do Not Track Kids Online Act,” would require online companies to explain the types of data that’s collected as well as how it is to be used or disclosed. It would also update language to include mobile applications, and it would ban companies from using children and teens’ personal data for targeted advertising.
The federal government is examining a number of new measures to protect consumers’ privacy online, but no surprise, particular attention is being paid to the children’s privacy online – not just on those sites like Disney’s aimed at directly at those under 13, but at others such as Facebook that, despite Terms of Service rules that dictate otherwise, are full of children.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
How Many Google Privacy Policies Are You Violating?
Sep 13th
If you’re a Google advertiser, or use Google Analytics, you may be inadvertently violating some of their privacy policies. When I examined more than 200 sites I found that more than 90% were violating at least one Google privacy policy. Are you?
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Google Also Violating Own AdWords Guidelines
Jul 1st
This morning, we reported that Google was cloaking and thus violating their own Webmaster guidelines. Now I have official confirmation from Google that they were also violating their AdWords guidelines.
I noticed this morning via a WebmasterWorld thread that BP, the oil spill company, is advertising on Google for the term [oil spill]. The [...]
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