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NEWS ABOUT: online privacy

Facebook Rolling Out New Face Recognition Photo Tags

Also: Site poised for $2B in revenue this year

(Newser) - Get ready for another Facebook update: Next week, the site will start rolling out new face-recognition technology for photos, the Huffington Post reports. It’s “comforting” to know that the service won’t be automatic, writes Larry Magid. If the site thinks it recognizes someone, it will ask you... More »

Users Sue YouPorn for Spying on Them

Site allegedly rummaged through browsing histories

(Newser) - It seems YouPorn’s been a very naughty website. Two California men have filed a class-action lawsuit, complaining that the homemade smut site has been spying on users’ surfing histories. When users surfed to YouPorn, a Javascript looked through their history to see which links have been marked as “... More »

Online Trackers to Tell You What They Know About You

Service to let users edit their demographics, or opt out

(Newser) - Online tracking companies are banding together to create a service where Internet users can view information collected about them, the Wall Street Journal reports. Via the Open Data Partnership, consumers will be able to edit their interests and demographics as gathered by eight tracking companies like BlueKai and eXelate—and... More »

FTC Wants Do-Not-Track System for Web

Says Internet users need better privacy protection

(Newser) - The FTC is calling for the creation of a system that allows consumers to opt out of having the web pages they view tracked by advertisers, the Wall Street Journal reports. The commission said "industry must do better" to protect online privacy in its report issued today. The FTC... More »

Life Insurers Mine Web to Profile Customers

Buying data Is cheaper than blood tests

(Newser) - Life insurers have traditionally relied on medical tests to get an estimate of a candidate's longevity—screening for things like drug use or high cholesterol. But they're experimenting with a much cheaper, and clandestine, method: gathering up the vast amount of information about people from the web via social networks,... More »

Cops Screen Recruits' Texts, Facebook Posts

Racy pics, suicide threats get would-be cops dumped

(Newser) - Law enforcement agencies are probing potential recruits’ digital lives for information that might make them unfit for the job, USA Today reports. More than a third of police agencies look into applicants’ social media presence, says a new report conducted for police executives. Reviewing postings to sites like Facebook, MySpace,... More »

White House Plans Internet Privacy Watchdog

New consumer protection laws to be drafted

(Newser) - The Obama administration is stepping up efforts to increase regulation of the Internet and protect users' privacy. New laws to bring protections in line with today's technology are being drafted, along with plans to create a new position to oversee the administration's efforts, sources tell the Wall Street Journa l.... More »

Google, Facebook Bicker Over Contacts

Social network sneaks around search giant's block

(Newser) - Angered by Facebook’s data export policies, Google barred Facebook users from importing Gmail contacts last week—but Facebook quickly found a way around the problem, the Guardian reports. Calling for a “world of true data liberation,” Google labeled the social networking site a “data dead end”... More »

13 Things You Should Never Post on Facebook

C'mon, now: You know not to post your phone number ... right?

(Newser) - Love bragging to your Facebook friends that you and your roomie are about to embark on a 10-mile run? Stop. You're basically broadcasting to thieves that your home is theirs for the taking for the next 90 minutes. On the Huffington Post , Catharine Smith and Bianca Bosker list 12 more... More »

Facebook App Identifies Non-Voters, Nags Them

Democrats in California using it in get-out-the-vote push

(Newser) - Democrats in California who tend to skip Election Day may be getting a nagging reminder to vote from an unlikely source—their Facebook friends. The party is using a new app that scours a user's list of friends, identifies registered Democrats who don't actually vote a lot, and encourages the... More »

Web Firm Sells IDs, Personal Data

RapLeaf takes online tracking a step further

(Newser) - Most of us know that web firms track our interests and affiliations by following our online activity. But at least one firm, RapLeaf, follows the digital trail a step further, linking people's virtual behavior to the real world by collecting specific names and email address and selling them to advertising... More »

Google: We Accidentally Grabbed Emails, Passwords

Street View privacy flap worse than reported

(Newser) - First MySpace , now Google: Apparently today is the day for Internet privacy flaps. Google, which admitted in May its roving Street View cars collected data about websites people visited on unprotected WiFi networks, admits now that the cars actually collected even more personal data—including complete emails and passwords,... More »

MySpace Leaks User Data, Too

But, apparently, it's not quite as bad as Facebook

(Newser) - Poor MySpace: Even in a privacy flap, it has a hard time competing with Facebook. In the wake of the latest Facebook privacy uproar—some apps on the social networking site have been leaking user data —comes news that MySpace has similar problems. Both MySpace itself as well as... More »

Congress Has Some Questions for Zuckerberg

Two representatives get involved in the latest privacy breach

(Newser) - Congress is getting involved in the latest Facebook privacy snafu. Following Monday’s revelation that many popular Facebook apps are transmitting identifying information to dozens of companies, two House members are asking the social networking site for more information about how applications handle user details. Facebook has until Oct. 27... More »

Those Deleted Facebook Pics? Not Actually Deleted

Sixteen months later, one writer's photo can still be found

(Newser) - Despite all Facebook’s talk about improving privacy, it still takes an awfully long time for photos to actually be deleted from the site. Jacqui Cheng experimented with deleting one of her photos from Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook last year . Flickr and Twitter removed the photos within seconds—meaning... More »

'Scrapers' Sell Personal Info Ripped From Web

It's perfectly legal and very intrusive

(Newser) - The line between research and invasion of privacy has never been so thin as with data "scraping"—the practice of rapidly collecting massive amounts of personal data from the web to sell as consumer research. The Wall Street Journal zeroes in on the experience of PatientsLikeMe.com, a... More »

HTML5: Who Needs Privacy?

New web standard leaves your computer wide open

(Newser) - There’s been plenty of worry over the years about Internet privacy, “but the alarmists have not seen anything yet,” warns the New York Times in a front-page story on the dangers of HTML5. The new web standards will bring tons of new features—“It’s going... More »

Feds Want to Make It Easier to Eavesdrop Online

Bill seeks to expand government's wiretapping power

(Newser) - The feds want to overhaul wiretapping regulations to expand their ability to eavesdrop online, reports the New York Times . The Obama administration plans to submit a bill to Congress next year that would require all service providers to be technically capable of wiretapping the communications they enable, from encrypted BlackBerry... More »

Facebook Rival Diaspora Offers Peek at New Site

Creators release code for developers, put emphasis on privacy

(Newser) - Developers have been given a preview of a site that aims to be a privacy-conscious rival to Facebook. The team behind open-source social networking project Diaspora have released the project's source code. "This is now a community project and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who... More »

Snooping Google Engineer Could Face Jail Time

Engineer who spied on teen chat logs may have broken federal law

(Newser) - A Google engineer who abused his access to data to snoop on teenagers' chat logs and harass them could face up to 5 years in jail if government officials decide to prosecute him. David Barksdale's spying on Google Voice and Google Talk accounts definitely wasn't "in the normal course... More »

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