Ryan Singel reports: The online analytics firm KISSmetrics quietly overhauled its web tracking methods over the weekend, and is now permitting users to block its surveillance, in a hurried response to a report slamming the company for using sneaky techniques to track web users who visit some of the biggest sites on the net. The 17-person Bay…
Category: Business
Street View cars grabbed locations of phones, PCs
Declan McCullagh reports: Google’s Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed. The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other…
Facebook glitch reveals private videos
David John Walker notes: A Facebook spokesman said a problem which allowed videos uploaded to Facebook to be viewed by anyone on their friends’ list, regardless of whether they have been given access to the clip, has been fixed after being live for one week. Videos can be more sensitive than photos, so it is…
Lawmakers ask for information on Groupon’s privacy policy
Hayley Tsukayama reports: Following a Washington Post report, Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.) have sent a letter to Groupon asking for more information on changes it made to its privacy policy to share demographics, social and geolocation data with its business partners. “According to the article, Groupon will dramatically expand the categories…