Thomas Claburn reports: Attorneys representing former Gmail user Kelly Michaels of Smith County, Texas, have sued Google, claiming that its Gmail service violates users’ privacy by scanning e-mail messages to serve relevant ads. This is not the first time Google has faced such a suit. Another Texas resident, Keith Dunbar, made similar claims in November,…
Category: Business
Pineda and the Law of the Jungle
Chris Hoofnagle writes: A fair amount of misinformation has been generated surrounding the California Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Pineda v. Williams Sonoma, 51 Cal.4th 524, 2011 WL 446921. In Pineda, the Court held that a zip code could qualify as personal information under the State’s Song-Beverly Act. This means that companies that collect the…
UK businesses must ‘wake up’ to new EU law on cookies, Information Commissioner warns
From the ICO, this press release: Businesses and other organisations running websites in the UK must ‘wake up’ to the fact that EU legislation, which will require them to get consent in order to store or access information on consumers’ computers, is coming into force soon, Information Commissioner Christopher Graham will say today in a…
Suit: Amazon fraudulently collects, shares users’ personal info
Nick Eaton reports: A class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges Amazon.com fraudulently circumvents users’ Web-browser privacy settings to collect personal information without permission and share it with other companies. The suit says Amazon tricks Microsoft’s Internet Explorer into thinking the e-retail site is “more privacy-protective than it actually is,” and uses a clever work-around to collect…