Thanks to an anti-Google smear campaign ordered by Facebook and carried out by a PR agency, the relationship between Facebook and Google is unquestionably broken beyond repair. And that's bad news for users of both services.
Jared Newman | 13 May | Read more
Facebook users still do not use privacy controls to protect themselves, and a third of children under 18 are below the site's minimum age of 13, Consumer Reports reported in its June issue.
Representatives from Apple and Google are set to publicly speak about privacy matters next week.
Paul Suarez | 09 May | Read more
A series of internal e-mails from last year highlights how important location data is to Google, and likely gives more ammunition to privacy advocates over how these companies track your every move.
Apple appears to be headed for a Google-size privacy snafu over its iOS location-tracking database after lawmakers in Europe and Washington recently started asking questions.
Users concerned with online privacy have been struggling for years to come up with a solution to being tracked on the Web. Such users either want to avoid irritating, targeted ads based on browsing history or are concerned about businesses having too much access to our personal information.
Our social networks say a lot about us. When you register with a Website like Facebook, you voluntarily give up personal information like your name, photo, and phone number in exchange for the privilege of access to a network that makes it easy to keep in touch with friends and family. Facebook then makes money aggregating that information for sale to advertisers looking to target groups of potential customers with specific ages and interests. It’s an information economy, and to be clear, Facebook cleaves to a privacy policy that only permits the sharing of “non-personally identifiable attributes” with advertisers.
Alex Wawro | 30 Mar | Read more
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has given Microsoft's proposal for a standard protecting consumer privacy the seal of approval. Acceptance by W3C -- the governing body responsible for HTML5 -- is a significant hurdle for Microsoft as it works to give users more control over their own online privacy and the tools necessary to block unwanted Web tracking.
Tony Bradley | 25 Feb | Read more
Your home address and phone number are now part of the information dump third-party developers can obtain through Facebook-powered Website logins and applications.
Unless you've been leading a Luddite existence -- off camping in the Rockies or something -- you are probably aware that Gawker was the victim of an attack which exposed passwords and led to a deluge of Twitter spam. The silver lining of this incident is that it gives us yet another opportunity to examine real-world passwords and hopefully learn a lesson or two...but don't hold your breath.
Tony Bradley | 16 Dec | Read more
Facebook's latest privacy blunder is just the latest in a long line of SNAFUs for the world's largest social network. Here are some of the social network's greatest privacy faux pas.
John P. Mello Jr. | 19 Oct | Read more