Google's updated Chrome browser finally adds support for the "do not track" (DNT) standard. This was previously reported and confirmed by Google but is now rolling out. All other major browsers support DNT. The Internet Explorer browser is set to DNT by default. The other browsers require consumers to affirmatively indicate DNT as a preference. Microsoft's position in particular has angered ad-industry trade groups (and irked its partner Yahoo). The Digital Advertising Alliance, a kind of meta trade group comprised of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the IAB, the DMA, th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Google: Chrome | Legal: Privacy

Last week the internet was abuzz with the deal that Bulgarian digital rights activist, Bogomil Shopov scored. He managed to purchase 1.1 million user email addresses for the meager price of $5. The majority of the email addresses were from the US, Canada, UK and Europe and featured email addresses, user names and Facebook account numbers. Initially the data was believed to be secured through Facebook apps run by the list seller. The listing stated: "The information in this list has been collected through our Facebook apps and consists only of active Facebook users, mostly from the US, Ca [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Facebook | Facebook: Privacy | Legal: Privacy

After all the saber rattling, commentary and anticipation yesterday there was an expectation that Google would be asked by European data protection authorities, led by the French privacy regulator CNIL, to "unravel" or roll back its unified privacy policy. There was also a strong suggestion that there might be fines imposed. Instead we essentially got a relatively polite request to make some modest changes to the privacy policy, mostly around disclosures to end users. The coverage today of the CNIL letter to Larry Page (embedded below) is all over the map, with some outlets focused on hypot [...]

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Earlier this year, in March, Google consolidated more than 70 different privacy policies into a single more unified policy that allowed it to combine user data from all Google properties into a single view. Google argued that it represented privacy simplification for users (which was true). However it also benefited Google with more insight into its users' activities on the Google network, the ability to deliver more personalized search results and presumably enabled better ad targeting. The Europeans raised concerns about Google's new privacy policy at the time and suggested that it might [...]

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As part of the Amsterdam Privacy Conference held earlier this week in The Netherlands, professors from the UC Berkeley School of Law presented research on US consumer attitudes toward online privacy and the concept of "do not track" (DNT) in particular. The three professors behind the research, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Jennifer M. Urban and Su Li, have published several consumer privacy studies, most recently in the context of mobile payments. This new survey, supporting the report "Privacy and Modern Advertising," was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 1,203 US adult int [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy

Data collection firms are the new Big Tobacco. West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV has initiated what the New York Times called "an extensive investigation of nine leading information brokers." While their practices are legal, Rockefeller expressed concern that consumers don't know what information is being collected about them or how it's being used by marketers: "Collecting, storing and selling information about Americans raises all types of questions that require careful scrutiny," said Rockefeller in the press release. “While these practices may offer some benefits to consumers [...]

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ZDNet offers a rundown on the current, increasingly tense state of "do not track" (DNT) negotiations. The W3C standards body is trying to develop a DNT standard and ad-industry trade groups are essentially trying to derail it. Simply put, DNT is part of a larger set of consumer privacy protections first proposed by the US FTC in 2010 after an extended period of hearings on online behavioral targeting. Microsoft caused quite a stir in online marketing circles in May when it said that Internet Explorer 10 would be set to DNT by default. This stunned and angered ad-industry professionals. H [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy

The "holy grail" of online measurement has always been tracking to offline sales. Indeed, 95 percent of retail sales happen in stores and clicks are often a poor proxy for those in-store activities (comScore has long made this point regarding online display advertising). Accordingly there are now multiple initiatives going on to try and "close the loop" between online ads and offline sales. Google Wallet and Offers have online-to-offline tracking as one of their long-term objectives. And the advent and growth of smartphones has made online-offline tracking more feasible generally. Facebook [...]

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Last night at the equivalent of a midnight movie opening, Apple iPhone 5 pre-orders went on sale. Unlike some of my colleagues here at SEL/ML I was not up ordering one. But lots of people were and it appears the initial run of pre-orders has "sold out." Shipping and availability dates have now been pushed to "two weeks" rather than September 21. It took the previous iPhone (4S) roughly 24 hours to "sell out" initially. Last night Apple was apparently cleaned out of its first tranche of iPhones in roughly an hour, with a heavy load on servers. Would-be iPhone buyers can still potentially get [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Features & Analysis | Legal: Privacy | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Top News

According to a Google job listing and several stories this morning Google is building an internal "Red Team" to address privacy and security issues. The job description reads: As a Data Privacy Engineer at Google you will help ensure that our products are designed to the highest standards and are operated in a manner that protects the privacy of our users. Specifically, you will work as member of our Privacy Red Team to independently identify, research, and help resolve potential privacy risks across all of our products, services, and business processes in place today. Top candidates will hav [...]

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

It's official. As earlier reported, Google will pay $22.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that it placed tracking cookies and served targeted ads to Safari browser users, after it said it wouldn't. The cookie placement violated the privacy settlement Google reached with the FTC in October of last year. It's the largest penalty ever posed for violation of an existing order by the FTC, according to the Commission, but it represents a drop in the bucket for Google, which had Q2 revenues of more than $12 billion. When questioned about the sufficiency of the penalty, [...]

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Reuters is confirming that the civil penalty Google will pay to settle the "Cookiegate" episode, in which it bypassed the default Safari privacy settings on the iPhone, is $22.5 million. This figure was previously reported and represents a fine of $16,000 per violation per day. In February the Wall Street Journal first reported that Google and other ad networks (i.e., Gannett’s PointRoll) were discovered circumventing mobile Safari’s default “no third party cookies” settings. Google said it was simply trying to make its +1 buttons work on iOS and nothing sinister was intended. [...]

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Despite assurances to the contrary, Google told the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today that it still has some of the WiFi payload data that it's Street View cars collected in 2010. That data may include personal information such as usernames, passwords and email addresses that Google collected via unsecured WiFi networks. Google's collection of such data has sparked numerous governmental investigations around the world -- some of which are still in progress. Google had previously promised the UK government and public that it had deleted all of the data. But Google attorne [...]

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Facebook's use of facial recognition technology will be discussed during a Senate hearing on Wednesday. According to The Hill, Facebook will send Rob Sherman, its Washington DC-based Manager of Privacy and Public Policy to meet with a sub-panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Al Franken called for the hearing. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Privacy subcommittee, has voiced concern about Facebook not including sufficient privacy protections in the tagging feature. In comments to the Department of Commerce, Franken has written that Facebook likely holds the la [...]

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The Wall Street Journal reports Google and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected to announce the terms of 'Cookiegate' fine. This fine is due to Google bypassing the default privacy settings in Apple’s Safari web browser. The Wall Street Journal says they expect the fine to be the "largest penalty ever levied on a single company" by the FTC. The amount is a whopping $22.5 million according to sources. For Google, $22.5 million is not much but for their reputation, it just tacks on one more dent to their "do no evil" reputation. The penalty is $16,000 per violation per day, a [...]

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Last month Facebook settled the "Sponsored Stories" lawsuit brought on by 5 Facebook members and the total numbers have been disclosed this week.  The lawsuit alleged that Facebook violated California's laws by leveraging user photos, content and likelihood without consent. The lawsuit was filed in San Jose, California and Judge Lucy Koh found that the plaintiffs had "shown economic injury could occur through Facebook's use of their name, photographs and likenesses" according to Reuters.  Facebook has agreed to pay $10 million to charity to settle the lawsuit.  The settlement arrang [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Facebook | Facebook: Legal | Legal: Privacy

When it comes to tracking web users across the web, no one does it more than Google and Facebook. Those two companies filled out the top five spots in Evidon's Global Tracker Report, which was released on Tuesday. The report uses data from the 1.6 million users of Evidon's Ghostery web browser plugin, which monitors what tracking scripts/tags/etc. are installed on web pages. Evidon's data shows that Google products are Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 8 (DoubleClick), as well as No. 17 overall (AdWords). Facebook, meanwhile, has the 3rd and 5th most-prolific trackers. (Image via PC World) It s [...]

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Last week Google notched a major victory for Street View in Europe. The Swiss have affirmed its basic right to exist in the country, which is widely regarded to have among the toughest privacy laws on The Continent. The Swiss privacy regulator had demanded that Google guarantee it would be able to blur faces, car license plates and other images with complete accuracy, 100 percent of the time. That requirement was seen as a threat to Google's ability to continue to operate Street View in Switzerland -- because it could only blur faces (etc.) with 99 percent accuracy. In what was described [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Street View | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Legal: Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital consumer advocacy and civil liberties group, released its annual "When the Government Comes Knocking, Who Has Your Back?" report. The report analyzes the policies of major internet companies and some not so major ones, "including email providers, ISPs, cloud storage providers, and social networking sites — to assess whether they publicly commit to standing with users when the government seeks access to user data." The report assesses who will stand up for consumers and protect their data privacy when the government "comes a kn [...]

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Governments that had previously closed the book on Street View privacy investigations appear to be considering "round two," in the wake of the FCC report that asserted that the personal data collected was not inadvertent but intentional. Privacy regulators in both the UK and Australia are now considering reopening Street View privacy cases that were previously closed. Several other European nations had concluded similar investigations with either no penalties or relatively minor fines assessed against Google. Those generally favorable outcomes for Google were largely based on earlier sta [...]

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