Alexander Furnas writes: Jonathan Zittrain noted last summer, “If what you are getting online is for free, you are not the customer, you are the product.” This is just a fact: The Internet of free platforms, free services and free content is wholly subsidized by targeted advertising, the efficacy (and thus profitability) of which relies on collecting…
Category: Business
Google under investigation by U.S. and non-U.S. regulators for bypassing privacy settings
Julia Angwin reports: Regulators in the U.S. and European Union are investigating Google Inc. for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Web browser, according to people familiar with the investigations. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal. Read more on Wall Street…
18 Firms Sued for Using Privacy-invading Mobile Apps
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Yelp and 14 other companies have been hit with a lawsuit accusing them of distributing privacy-invading mobile applications. The lawsuit was filed by a group of 13 individuals in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas earlier this week. The suit charges 18 companies with…
Two Years After Its Data Breach, Upromise Email Notice Leaves Customer Confused
I’ve Been Mugged has an update on the Upromise toolbar breach mentioned previously on this blog. If you ever used UPromise, I’d encourage you to read his update as George provides a lot of background and pointed commentary on how Upromise is dealing with the breach and its settlement with the FTC.