Richard Chirgwin reports: Facebook has come out of its corner swinging in response to the accusation that its “shadow profiles”, among other aspects of its services, break Ireland’s privacy law. The latest round in the world+dog-versus-Facebook began last week, when a group called Europe-v-Facebook picked up research by Austrian student Max Schrens as the basis of a…
Category: Business
Pointer: Freaky Privacy News Of The Week
Over on Forbes, Kashmir Hill did a better job of keeping up with privacy developments this week than I did. Read her round-up of some news stories that I abysmally failed to keep up with this week while I go put myself in time out.
Facebook to give German state privacy exemption
Facebook has offered a special exemption from its data handling practices to Schleswig-Holstein after the northern German state’s data protection commissioner complained about the online social network’s popular “like” button. Thilo Weichert, who leads the state’s data protection efforts, said in August that the site’s “like” button violated German privacy laws because it allowed Facebook…
Remote spying moves to phones with a vengeance
Earlier this week, I was disgusted to find a promotional e-mail from SMS Privato Spy in my inbox. The company sells a service by which it sends a spoofed SMS message to a target phone that then allows the subscriber to monitor the phone’s activity – all of it. The company attempts to cover their…