With several governments and regulatory bodies around the world saying that Google's new privacy policy may violate their domestic rules (Europe, Japan), it goes into effect today. Advocacy group EPIC has been trying to block it saying that the consolidated privacy policy violates Google's earlier settlement with the FTC in the Buzz case/investigation. However that effort was unsuccessful. For its part, Google says the new policy will simplify privacy across Google's many properties and make it possible for the company to build a range of new products and services for consumers, including o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Regulation | Top News

You've probably read the news already that Scroogle is gone forever. It launched back in 2003 and was popular among searchers who wanted to get Google search results in a private setting. Now that it's gone, where can searchers go for a more private search experience than Google and Bing offer by default? Here's a list of a few alternatives. Note that different search engines below make different privacy-related claims; I haven't investigated them in detail -- i.e., by examining cookies, etc. -- so anyone looking for a private search experience should do his/her own research. Private Sea [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Web Search | Channel: Consumer | DuckDuckGo | Features: General | Google: Privacy | Google: Web Search | Legal: Privacy | Search Engines: IxQuick & Startpage | Top News

Call it "Cookiegate" -- or "Safarigate" perhaps. Late last night we got the Wall Street Journal's piece: "Google's iPhone Tracking: Web Giant, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy." Danny covered the article and its claims extensively at Marketing Land. This morning there's an expanding debate about whether the WSJ mischaracterized Google's behavior unfairly or whether the company has in fact been caught with its hand in the cookie jar -- as it were. To recap: Google and other ad networks (i.e., Gannett's PointRoll) were discovered circumventing mobile Safari's defaul [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Regulation | Top News

Several members of Congress continued to express reservations about Google's new privacy policy after a closed-door meeting on Thursday, with one House member saying that Google's handling of sensitive medical searches may violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Members of the House Energy and Commerce committee grilled Pablo Chavez, Google's director of public policy, and Google attorney Michael Yang for about two hours. After the meeting, several of the Representatives expressed their unhappiness with Google's answers on a variety of privacy issues -- quest [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Health | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Top News

As promised, Google has announced a way for WiFi router owners to stop Google from including them in the company's location database. The opt-out requires a change in the name of the wireless network (the SSID) to include _nomap at the end of the name. In other words, if your wireless network is named "McGeehome," you'd need to rename that to "McGeehome_nomap." (And frankly, I'd prefer you use your own last name while you're at it.) Google says this method "provides the right balance of simplicity as well as protection against abuse. Specifically, this approach helps protect against ot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Privacy | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy

According to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal the world's largest social network is nearing a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that will subject the company to 20 years of "privacy audits." A nearly identical punishment was imposed earlier this year on Google over "deceptive privacy practices in Google’s rollout of its Buzz social network." The complaint against Facebook stems from sweeping changes to privacy settings in 2009. Several privacy advocacy groups including EPIC complained to the FTC about Facebook's actions, which made much of users' profile data [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Regulation

Likely sensing an opportunity after Google's recent encrypted search announcement, Ixquick -- a tiny and widely unknown search engine -- has announced that it will make SSL encryption the default on all searches. Ixquick says it became the first search engine to offer encrypted search back in 2009. In its announcement, Ixquick notes that the major search engines have recently begun to offer SSL encrypted searching. Other search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have begun to follow Ixquick's lead by offering SSL encryption. However, the privacy benefits of using SSL with other major se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy | Search Engines: IxQuick & Startpage

Google caused a major stir in the search marketing community today with the news that it will begin encrypting searches and outbound clicks by default in some situations. The move means that valuable keyword referral data will not be passed to analytics programs (including Google Analytics) when a logged-in Google user searches from Google.com. Although Google says the change will impact less than 10 percent of searchers, that's still a significant amount of keyword referral data that will now be hidden from website owners. Well, it won't be hidden if those searchers click on one of Goog [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Features: Analysis | Google: Analytics | Google: Privacy | Google: Web Search | Legal: Privacy

Google will now begin encrypting searches that people do by default, if they are logged into Google.com already through a secure connection. The change to SSL search also means that sites people visit after clicking on results at Google will no longer receive "referrer" data that reveals what those people searched for, except in the case of ads. Google announced the news on its blog here, saying: As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Google: Privacy | Google: Webmaster Central | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Mark Zuckerberg at F8, the Facebook developer conference held last week, exhorted people to "tell their life story" on Facebook via its new Timeline feature. Facebook also promoted new Open Graph apps integration and so-called "frictionless sharing." But frictionless sharing is already creating a great deal of friction for Facebook in privacy circles and with regulators. In practice frictionless sharing means that once you authorize an app, your subsequent actions through that app are shared on your news feed or the new Ticker. This includes songs you listen to, news stories you read, movi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Regulation

Google has reached agreement with privacy officials in the German state of Hamburg that will allow website owners to continue using Google Analytics. The accord comes months after Hamburg officials threatened to fine German businesses that used Google Analytics. As part of the agreement, Google has made its analytics opt-out browser plugin available to Safari and Opera users -- it was previously available for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Google will also recognize an IP masking tool that prevents Analytics from storing the complete IP addresses of Internet users in Europe. Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Privacy

With the smoke still smoldering from Google's long-running battle over the collection of personal information via unsecured WiFi networks, the company says it's working on a service that will allow WiFi router owners to opt-out from being included in Google's location services. In a blog post yesterday, Google says the opt-out will be available to people around the world. Even though the wireless access point signals we use in our location services don't identify people, we think we can go further in protecting people's privacy. At the request of several European data protection authorit [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy

Call it "privacy 2.0." Last year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously (and incorrectly) said that privacy is no longer a social norm. However one has only to witness the uproar this week over Facebook Messenger and the exposure of phone contacts to see that privacy isn't dead. In Europe -- Spain in particular -- privacy is not only not fading away it's making new inroads against competing interests. Earlier this year in March we wrote about a new principle being developed in Spain and Europe: "the right to be forgotten." Specifically a Spanish court is asking Google to remove data about ro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features: Analysis | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Regulation

Google is likely to face more privacy-related challenges on the heels of news today that the company's Street View vehicles have collected more than just the location of WiFi access points. According to a CNET article today, Google collected those WiFi access points along with the location of client devices including mobile phones and desktop computers. 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 devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly avai [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Legal | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Just a couple weeks after the latest setback, Google picked up a small but potentially important victory today in its defense against charges that the company violated federal wiretap laws when its Street View cars intercepted personal data over unencrypted WiFi networks. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Judge James Ware has put the case on hold and given Google the go-ahead to appeal his ruling last month that kept open a group of consolidated lawsuits that accuse Google of violating the Federal Wiretap Act. In that decision, Ware dismissed a pair of claims against Google, but refus [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Legal | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy

Google is currently considering its options after a federal judge gave the go-ahead for a group of consolidated lawsuits to proceed against the company over a potential violation of the Federal Wiretap Act. Wednesday's decision by US District Judge James Ware, first reported by Wired, actually dismissed two of the three claims against Google, but left open the group's ability to sue Google for potentially violating the Wiretap Act: … the Court finds that Plaintiffs plead facts sufficient to state a claim for violation of the Wiretap Act. In particular, Plaintiffs plead that Defendant [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Legal | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy | Top News

The Financial Times has identified a "privacy flaw" within Google+: re-sharing. A privately shared post or picture can be subsequently re-published or shared by the recipient to any of his or her Circles or the entire world. This would potentially thwart the privacy "settings" or objectives of the original creator of the post. Google is aware of the problem and says that it will address it. (See below for "fix.") For example, if I have a private Circle of co-workers and somebody makes a defamatory statement about "the boss" and then it's made "public" by re-sharing it could cause [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Google+ | Google: Legal | Legal: Privacy

Two mobile-location privacy bills have been simultaneously introduced in Congress. Both are intended to regulate when location on mobile devices can be accessed and provide penalties for failure to obtain proper consent or authorization. The first of the two bills is from Democratic Senators Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal and would require Google, Apple, app developers and others to gain consent before accessing user location information. The Hill reports that the US Justice Department would be the enforcing agency for any compliance failures. Would Require Consent to Grab Location Acc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Legal: Privacy

Some form of digital privacy regulation in the US is about 90 percent certain in the coming year. In Europe, where privacy rules are much more stringent, the details of new consumer protections are currently being worked out on a practical level. For example on Wednesday the EU data protection authority decided that location data will be classified as personal information. What that will mean is that location data collection in Europe will become opt-in rather than opt-out. As you already know Europe is also putting lots of rules around cookies (and in some cases analytics). Focus on What [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Legal: Privacy

Things have been a little quiet -- perhaps even boring -- since Eric Schmidt stepped down as Google's CEO to become the company's Executive Chairman. The strange quotes and not-so-funny attempts at cracking privacy-related jokes have slowed down in the past couple months. But Schmidt may have just added another one to his collection of so-called "creepy" quotes. It's in an article/interview from London's Evening Standard. The reporter asks Schmidt the obligatory question about Facebook and social networking and, in the process of explaining Google's approach to social, Schmidt appears t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Critics | Google: Employees | Legal: Privacy | Top News