Mikael Ricknäs reports: The Norwegian Tax Administration and the State Educational Loan Fund’s use of Google Analytics violate the country’s privacy laws, because the agencies have no control over how Google uses information about users, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority said on Tuesday. The authority, which has a history of keeping U.S. IT companies on…
Category: Business
U.S. Customs Tracks Millions Of License Plates, Shares Data With Insurance Firms
Andy Greenberg reports: It may come as little surprise that every time you cross the border, cameras record your license plate number and feed it into a database of driver locations. More disturbing, perhaps, is the fact that the government seems to share that automobile surveillance data with an unexpected third party: insurance companies. Documents…
DMA urges Congress to back off on regulating direct marketers
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is dismissing congressional privacy concerns about the mass aggregation of consumer data. A bipartisan group of US House members sent letters to major data brokers about the privacy implications of data aggregation of consumer data. “By combining data from numerous offline and online sources, data brokers have developed hidden dossiers on…
In the doghouse? Google engages Irish commissioner but still keeps sensitive information
Mark Keenan reports: Google has failed to explain adequately to the data protection authorities why it has not deleted sensitive data it collected illicitly from Irish businesses and households throughout Ireland during its 2009 sweep of the country for its Street View project. The multinational caused controversy when it emerged that it had scanned commercially…