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Angry Birds and other Facebook apps score low on privacy
April 22, 2012 | 1 Comment
A new service that grades how each of Facebook’s top third-party apps respects consumers’ privacy was released late Sunday by research firm PrivacyChoice. The free tool, Privacyscore for Facebook, spells out privacy policies and tracking practices of more than 200 top Facebook apps, including games, work-related programs and sharing apps.
Online tracking is fueling a heated national debate over whether new do-not-track laws are needed to safeguard …more
Obama calls for a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights
February 23, 2012 | Comment on this post
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 23FEB2012, P1B
The White House on Wednesday unveiled a strongly worded “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights’’ as the linchpin for a drive to get Congress to pass new laws protecting consumers privacy as they surf the Internet.
The announcement came as Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and attorneys general from 35 other states sent a letter to Google complaining about a new …more
Microsoft-Google privacy tussle widens spotlight on invasive practices
February 22, 2012 | Comment on this post
By Byron Acohido
USA TODAY, 22Feb2012, P1B
Mud-slinging between tech rivals is nothing new. But the red hot issue of online privacy has pushed it to another level.
Last week Google scrambled to deflect criticism that it tracked the online activities of users’ of Apple’s Safari web browser against their wishes, by circumventing an anti-tracking mechanism.
On Tuesday the search giant lashed out at Microsoft in response to …more
Google takes heat for tracking Safari users against their wishes
February 17, 2012 | Comment on this post
Yet more evidence of the gold rush to harvest and store profiling data on Internet users:
Google came under fire today by several members of Congress after a Stanford University grad student disclosed how the search giant has been tracking the online activities of users of Apple’s Safari web browser, despite the default use of a browser mechanism to block such tracking.
Jonathan Mayer, a grad student and …more
Path privacy gaffe highlights gold rush for mobile users’ data
February 16, 2012 | Comment on this post
Apple on Wednesday moved to quell the rising furor over disclosures that social network Path and several other makers of iOS apps collect and store users address books without asking their permission.
The tech giant said it would require third-party suppliers of applications in its App Store to secure user approval to use address book data, including full …more
Data thieves crack Microsoft’s India store
February 13, 2012 | Comment on this post
Another big corporation’s customer database has been breached. This time it’s Microsoft, specifically the software giant’s online retail store serving India.
“As we saw with Sony, Stratfor, Zappos and others, hackers value this information and are selling it on a thriving black market to others focused on identity theft,” says Todd Thiemann, product specialist at encryption company Vormetric. “Companies need to rethink how to value and protect customer …more
Spammers exploit notoriety of Romney, Gingrich
February 10, 2012 | Comment on this post
Spamming continues as a lucrative global enterprise, with ebbs and flows pegged to high-profile events and celebrity news.
The latest example of that: e-mail messages playing off the notoriety of Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are helping fuel an uptick in spam.
Unsolicited messages pitching products ranging from car loans and credit scoring to uncertified drugs and fad diets have actually tailed off in the past …more
EPIC asks court to block Google’s new privacy policy
February 9, 2012 | 1 Comment
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 09FEB2012, p3B
An advocacy group went to court on Wednesday to block Google from making a policy change that could lead to the search giant assembling richer behavior profiles of people who use more than one of its popular online services.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint asking a Washington, D.C., district court judge to restrain Google from making the …more