A new survey from a group called Consumer Action has an unequivocal message for marketers: do not track us. The telephone survey was conducted in May among 1,000 US adults. The findings are pretty negative, even ominous, for publishers and ad networks. However, they should come as no surprise. In numerous past surveys consumers have consistently expressed ambivalence and even outright hostility to the idea of being tracked and targeted by online marketers, ad networks and publishers. This survey was partly funded through "a grant from Microsoft." Below I highlight some of the findings bu [...]

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Google wants to be transparent to its users about the number of super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests it is served by the US government -- and it is claiming a First Amendment right to do so, in a new legal challenge the company has mounted. The Washington Post has news of the filing, along with the first page of it. The Wall Street Journal also has news, along with the full document. Google has also published a statement on Google+ explaining its move: We have long pushed for transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: PRISM | Top News

Google Glass isn't publicly available yet, and even the Explorer edition is supposed to only be for US residents, but that's not stopping the Canadian government from getting out in front of what it considers to be several privacy issues surrounding the device. Data protection authorities in Canada sent a letter today to Google CEO Larry Page, asking the company to take part in a "real dialogue" about the "significant privacy issues" related to Google Glass. Here's a portion of the letter, which is signed by Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and 36 provincial and internatio [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google | Google: Glass | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Following missives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple over the past 72 hours, Yahoo issued its own disclosure statement last night about law-enforcement data requests. Signed by CEO Marissa Mayer and General Counsel Ron Bell, the statement said that there had been "between 12,000 and 13,000" data requests during the past six months: We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it. To that end, we are disclosing the total number of requests for user data that law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made to us between December 1, 2012 and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

Following the NSA-PRISM surveillance revelations last week and "direct-access rebuttals" by other major tech firms, Apple has released a similar statement denying that the government has unfettered access to its users' data. Apple said, "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order." The company said it was "authorized [by the US] to share" and that in the past six months "Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data. Between 9,000 and [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: Siri | Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy

Last night, what might be called a "transparency battle" erupted between Google and Facebook following Facebook's disclosure of government-related user-data requests: For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: International | Facebook: Legal | Facebook: Privacy | Google: International | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News

The Financial Times is reporting that Google is now "facing an investigation by European authorities into allegations that it supported the leading Android smartphone platform and its mobile services by means of cut-price licensing and exclusivity deals." There isn't a formal investigation on this question yet. Rather, the European Commission is submitting a questionnaire to device makers and mobile carriers for their input. Google's rivals are undoubtedly behind these complaints to keep pressure on the European Commission, which is on the cusp of settling its antitrust (search-related) in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Featured | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: International | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Legal: General

Twitter has lost an appeal in France to avoid disclosing the identities of people behind anti-Semitic hashtags that appeared and trended last year. Among them were #unjuifmort, which translates "a dead Jew," and “unbonjuif" ("a good Jew"), which became a source of jokes about The Holocaust and killing Jews. Anti-Semitism is currently on the rise throughout Europe. The Union of Jewish French Students (UEJF) and other human-rights groups sought disclosure of the identities of those behind the hashtags. Twitter refused, though it removed some of the more outrageous content. In January, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Legal: Censorship | Legal: General | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Legal

[caption id="attachment_47969" align="alignright" width="300"] Image via shutterstock.com[/caption] Social media policies aren't typically the first things that come to mind when you're developing a social media marketing strategy. But they should be. Without social media policies in place, social media marketing plans are unsustainable. On social networks, reach is a function of engagement. Without engagement, there is no reach. Thus, in order for social media marketing messages to get noticed, they need to get passed along to friends of friends and their friends. That means other [...]

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Google, Facebook and Microsoft have all asked the US government for permission to include data requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), requests that are currently so secret that they're not even allowed to acknowledge if they've received any. During the whirlwind of news about the PRISM/NSA scandal, news has circulated that all three companies are providing large amounts of data to the US National Security Agency (NSA) because of FISA. Google Asks To Talk About FISA In today's letter to the US Attorney General's office and FBI, Google's top legal officer, [...]

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An enormous amount has already been written about the National Security Agency's (NSA's) "domestic spying" since The Guardian's initial revelations about the secret collection of telco company records just a couple of days ago. That was followed 24 hours later by even more explosive revelations from The Washington Post of supposedly direct NSA access to the servers of major US Internet companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo and Facebook. Almost all the companies named in top-secret slides exposed by The Washington Post have issued strong denials -- in the case of Google, multiple denials [...]

Related Topics: Features & Analysis | Legal: General | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy

The United States government has declassified details of its "PRISM" program today, saying it is not a wide-spread data mining system and doesn't "unilaterally" pull information off tech company servers. "PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision," the US said about the program, in a fact sheet (PDF) that was released today. Statement Slams [...]

Related Topics: Legal: PRISM

The US government has no back door, front door or side door into our data, Google effectively said today, with its third PRISM-related denial. Each denial keeps stressing that Google doesn't provide any type of constant stream of data to the government, that Google only hands over data on a case-by-case basis, after a legal order and review. I'll do today's statement from Google, but I thought it would be better to do all of them, in the order issued. Thursday: No "Back Door" Here's the first, which came out on Thursday. I've bolded the key parts: Google cares deeply about the security o [...]

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Tech companies are hand-in-hand cooperating to let the US government perform on-going monitoring of people, or at least their data. Right? Probably not. They are probably doing something very different, providing data when legally compelled to on a case-by-case basis. Understanding these two things is helpful to avoid some of the PRISM hysterics going on right now. The PRISM Monitoring System Around this time Thursday, the Washington Post and the Guardian had made the case that major tech companies were involved in a PRISM program that, to quote the whistleblower who provided the information [...]

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Tech companies named in reports to be part of the NSA's "PRISM" data gathering program have strongly denied participating in programs giving "direct access" to their servers. But the New York Times is now reporting this may be because they provided indirect ways for the system to at least selectively request and receive data, after legal review. The New York Times story, Tech Companies, Bristling, Concede to Federal Surveillance Program, may give the impression that all the named companies were part of the PRISM system, for those who have been following the story. But it never names PR [...]

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[caption id="attachment_47324" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Source: Washington Post, The Guardian[/caption] Quite a bit of debate has emerged by how similar these various denials of PRISM involvement are from the tech companies involved. I think they've all evolved naturally from each other and from the stories they were responding to. This is my reasoning. Google & The "Back Door" Both the Washington Post story and the Guardian story had this statement from Google in their stories when they initially ran: Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose use [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: PRISM

Over the years, Google has received several letters from the US Congress worried that it is somehow invading people's privacy. Now Congress, along with the Obama Administration and the US judicial system, is accused of invading the privacy of people who use Google's services. I thought the turnabout would be fair play, a letter from Google back to Congress. The letter below isn't real, but the points and unanswered questions are. I've written in the style of the latest letter Google received from Congress, last month about Google Glass. As Google professes it is not part of any data g [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy

Both Google and Facebook gave the press statements yesterday denying involvement with the US National Security Agency's PRISM data gathering program. Today, both are making that statement more strongly and taking it directly to its users. Google To Users Writing today on the Google blog, Google CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said: We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Privacy | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy

It turns out that for the past roughly 6 years, the US government has been "collecting" or "mining" US citizens' personal data and communications from telcos and Internet companies -- effectively "spying" on US citizens. Those data, it has been alleged, come in large part from direct access to the servers of most of the Internet's biggest brands: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and others. (Dropbox was apparently cited in leaked documents as “coming soon.”) These bombshell disclosures follow yesterday's discovery that the US government was collecting Verizon telephon [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Facebook: Privacy | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: PRISM | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News

[caption id="attachment_47324" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Source: Washington Post, The Guardian[/caption] Both the Washington Post and The Guardian are out with stories saying that several major Internet companies gave the US National Security Agency direct access to user data on their servers by participating in what's been named as the PRISM program. But, Google, Apple & Facebook flat-out deny being in that program, while Yahoo and Microsoft have issued general denials. Google, it denied participation in PRISM to us, when asked specifically about the program, plus gave us the [...]

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