Brian Fung reports:
Companies such as Google and Facebook thrive on your personal data — the bits of information that tell advertisers how old you are, what brands you like and how long you lingered on that must-see cat video. Historically, how these companies use this data has been subject to oversight by the Federal Trade Commission, the government’s top privacy watchdog.
But a big court defeat for the FTC last week is jeopardizing the agency’s power to protect your online privacy, analysts say. The ruling could wind up giving Google and Facebook, not to mention other companies in the internet ecosystem, the ability to escape all privacy oversight from the FTC — and possibly from the rest of government, too, critics claim, unless Congress intervenes.
Read more on Providence Journal.