Wendy Davis reports: Analytics company KISSmetrics has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by promising to avoid using ETags or other “supercookies” to track people online without first notifying them and giving them a choice. The company also will pay $2,500 each to the consumers who sued — John Kim and Dan Schutzman — and…
Category: Business
Compete Settles FTC Charges That it Deceived Consumers and Failed to Safeguard Sensitive Data
From the FTC: A web analytics company has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated federal law by using its web-tracking software that collected personal data without disclosing the extent of the information that it was collecting. The company, Compete Inc., also allegedly failed to honor promises it made to protect the personal…
MasterCard Is Selling Your Data Just in Time for the Holidays
Well, I missed this last week, but happily, Joe Cadillic sent it on to me. Marcus Wohlsen reports: Credit card companies make money by taking a cut every time you swipe your plastic at the checkout counter. Now MasterCard has found a way to make those swipes pay over and over again. As the Financial Times first reported,…
Outsourcing Privacy in Higher Education
Steve Kolowich reports: After several years of negotiating, a dozen colleges have reached an agreement with Microsoft that could inspire more institutions to outsource their internal communications and data storage systems to the company and its far-flung servers — even when those systems hold sensitive student and research data. Since 2010 Microsoft had been in talks…