Amir Efrati reports: Twitter on Monday announced the acquisition of a two-person startup called Whisper Systems, whose technology protected people’s mobile-phone calls and text messages from being obtained by third parties such as governments. The deal terms weren’t disclosed. The acquisition led to speculation about what Twitter, an online-messaging service, might do with Whisper Systems…
Category: Business
Schumer: Don’t track shoppers without consent
Senator Schumer just got himself a lot of positive press by telling malls not to track shoppers’ cellphones without express opt-in consent. The technology, Footpath, by U.K. firm Path Intelligence, has been used in both the U.K. and Australia over the past few years, and was scheduled to debut here this holiday weekend. Plans were canceled,…
EU: Facebook faces a crackdown on selling users’ secrets to advertisers (updated)
This has the potential to be huge. Jason Lewis reports: The European Commission is planning to stop the way the website “eavesdrops” on its users to gather information about their political opinions, sexuality, religious beliefs – and even their whereabouts. Using sophisticated software, the firm harvests information from people’s activities on the social networking site…
Redbox Can be Liable Under the Video Privacy Protection Act for Failure to Purge Video Rental Records
Venkat Balasubramani writes: Redbox is a company which rents DVDs to customers from automated, self-service kiosks, typically charging $1 per rental. The customer is required to return the DVD the following day and, if the customer fails to do so, the customer is charged a late fee. If the customer is twenty five days late,…