Tara Carman reports: A Sunshine Coast man is taking Internet giant Google to court for allegedly mining and profiting from information sent to Gmail accounts from non-Gmail users. The lawsuit, filed in B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon, is a proposed class action that, if certified by the court, could potentially include anyone in the…
Category: Business
Gotcha! Group uncovers privacy lies in websites’ fine print
Ted Samson reports: What are the odds that the average person reads the ToS (terms of service) before signing on to a new social networking site, email service, or any other service or software? Probably slightly worse than the odds that the average user will, indeed, RTFM (read the freaking manual) before calling the help…
Operator of Celebrity Fan Websites to Pay $1 Million to Settle FTC Charges that It Illegally Collected Children’s Information Without Their Parents’ Consent
Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post broke the story the other day, but now it’s up on the FTC’s site: The operator of fan websites for music stars Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by…
Privacy Advocates and Advertisers at Odds Over Web Tracking
Kevin J. O’Brien reports: An effort to develop an easy way for consumers around the world to avoid being tracked and targeted by Internet advertisers appeared to hit an impasse Thursday, as privacy advocates and industry representatives accused each other of scuttling the process. The closed-door meeting organized by W3C, the global standards group that…