Since yesterday, when Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross of Carnegie Mellon University released a study demonstrating that it is relatively easy to predict an individual’s Social Security Number (SSN) using data from readily available public records, the security world has been buzzing. As someone who was given a draft copy of the paper to read…
Category: Business
Self-Regulatory Proposal: Faint Praise, Criticisms
There has been relatively little reaction from the privacy community since a consortium of major players in online behavioral advertising led by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) issued a proposal for self-regulation last week. But Ryan Calo of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society has turned his lawyerly eye to the proposal…
Court: IP addresses != PII
In a ruling that could fuel debate about online privacy, a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personal information. “In order for ‘personally identifiable information’ to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer,” U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones said in a…
Phorm shares fall as BT opts out
Shares in the online ad firm Phorm have fallen by a third after BT said it had no immediate plans to use the service that tracks online behaviour. Phorm serves up adverts related to a user’s web browsing history, which it monitors by taking a copy of the places they go and search terms they…