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…
Category: Business
Facebook faces complaints over data retention practices
Jeremy Kirk reports: Facebook’s data retention practices are under investigation by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner following a series of complaints filed by a European group critical of the social networking site. A total of 22 complaints have been filed with the Data Protection Commissioner by Europe v. Facebook, a group that claims the company is at…
Class Action Lawsuit Targets Pandora
Eriq Gardner reports: Pandora, the web service that allows users to customize radio stations based on listening preferences, is facing a class action lawsuit in Michigan. Peter Deacon, a Michigan resident, is leading the lawsuit with claims that Pandora is breaching customer privacy by making users’ profile pages, including favorite songs and listener history, publicly…
Theater to Pay $6.8M for Faxing Unsolicited Ads
Jamie Ross reports: A $6.8 million settlement has been reached to a 2000 class action alleging that United Artists Theatre Circuit and American Blast Fax sent unsolicited faxes for movie tickets to between 57,000 and 95,000 fax numbers in Phoenix. The lawsuit, filed in May 2000 in Maricopa County Court, claimed that the defendants’ faxes…