Loek Essers reports: A German privacy regulator ordered Facebook to stop enforcing its real name policy because it violates a German law that gives users the right to use nicknames online. Facebook refused to permit the use of pseudonyms on its platform as required by the German Telemedia Act, Thilo Weichert, privacy commissioner and head…
Category: Business
FTC to Study Data Broker Industry’s Collection and Use of Consumer Data (Updated)
From the FTC: The Federal Trade Commission issued orders requiring nine data brokerage companies to provide the agency with information about how they collect and use data about consumers. The agency will use the information to study privacy practices in the data broker industry. Data brokers are companies that collect personal information about consumers from a variety…
German state orders Facebook to allow pseudonyms
Lance Whitney reports: Facebook is on the hot seat in Germany for requiring users to use their real names instead of pseudonyms. The data protection agency Unabhaengiges Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz (ULD) in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein has ordered Facebook to put a halt to its real name policy, citing a German law that…
How spyware on rental PCs captured users’ most intimate moments
Although I’ve written a lot already about the PC Rent-to-Own spyware cases brought by the FTC and a couple in a civil suit, Dan Goodin provides a detailed description of some of the problems raised by the software and its developer’s reactions to the brouhaha. Read his article over on Ars Technica,