From Building a Smarter Planet: To paraphrase Margaret Mead, progress that matters is usually set in motion by a handful of committed people possessed by a great idea and the will to pursue it. In that vein, this summer a small team of privacy professionals coalesced around a promising idea–providing non-profit organizations with free legal…
Category: Business
HTC Android handsets spew private data to ANY app
Bill Ray writes: A data logger pushed out by HTC to Android handsets has opened up a vulnerability allowing any app with internet permissions to access private customer information. The vulnerability was spotted by Trevor Eckhart, who informed HTC about it and waited five days for a response. Following that he decided to go public…
Spotify’s ‘frictionless sharing’ bows to Facebook privacy pressure
Zack Whittaker reports: Spotify has not had the greatest start, as part of its flagship music service to Facebook. Users of Spotify’s service, without warning, started seeing their music playlists and history shared to Facebook. Users had to opt-out of the service by manually disabling the feature. Many users complained about the Facebook integration, and…
Internet firms co-opted for surveillance -experts
Georgina Prodhan reports: Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week. Although such companies try to keep their users’ information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and…