Back in June 2010, Mike Robertson sued Facebook in federal court over leaking user information in referral headers. The complaint was amended in October 2010, but most of the case was dismissed in May 2011 and the rest of the case was dismissed in November for lack of demonstrable harm. Now Wendy Davis of MediaPost reports that…
Category: Business
Company Denies Role in Recently Uncovered Spyware
Nicole Perlroth reports: An executive at Gamma Group, a British company that sells surveillance technologies, denied on Wednesday that a spyware program running on servers in 11 countries is part of his company’s product line. Gamma Group makes FinFisher, spyware that, according to the company’s promotional materials, can be “used to access target systems, giving…
Germans reopen Facebook privacy inquiry, but what can they really do?
Kevin J. O’Brien reports: Data protection officials in Germany reopened an investigation into Facebook’s facial recognition technology Wednesday, saying the social networking giant was illegally compiling a vast photo database of users without their consent. The data protection commissioner in Hamburg, Johannes Caspar, said he had reopened his investigation, which he had suspended in June,…
FTC Approves Final Settlement With Facebook
FTC cleared up another big case week – it finalized its settlement with Facebook. Despite receiving numerous comments on the proposed settlement, the Commission approved the final settlement without any changes: Following a public comment period, the FTC has accepted as final a settlement with Facebook resolving charges that Facebook deceived consumers by telling them they could keep…