Google and Viacom have reached an agreement meant to ease privacy concerns about YouTube records being handed over to Viacom through a court order. However, there remain some questions about how exactly the “anonymizing” of these records will actually work. Until those are answered, I wouldn’t breathe a complete privacy sigh of relief yet.
Since writing my WTF! US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube article, more information has come out suggesting that Google will be able to turn over information to Viacom about what’s watched on YouTube without having to say who exactly who was watching it. Nor, does it seem, that Viacom itself wants that […]
You have no privacy on YouTube. So effectively declared a US judge yesterday. And now somebody in the US government better stop grandstanding about search and privacy protection and actually get some laws enacted. Yesterday’s move might be the ultimate incentive, as US politicians realize that what they’ve watched on YouTube may now be open […]
Last week, the three major search engines came together to say how they agree — and disagree — over the Robots Exclusion Protocol. It’s such an important standard, one every webmaster should understand. To help, Vanessa Fox has compiled an extensive and outstanding overview of it at Jane & Robot in her Managing Robot’s Access […]
Microsoft has added its input to that of a host of other stakeholders in the growing debate over consumer privacy, online ad targeting, and potential US (and local) government regulation. (Here’s a related WSJ story on search engine efforts to block a proposed anti-tracking law in the New York state legislature.) In a filing today […]
The head of an EU group looking into search privacy issues said yesterday that Internet Protocol addresses assigned to computers should be treated as personal information. Below, more about that plus a look at some comments about how the search engines have been reported to the European Parliament to be dealing with privacy.
As we covered earlier, US Representative Joe Barton sent Google a letter with 24 questions relating to privacy — along with a week to answer them. I was annoyed that some seemed basic and already answered in a way that one of his interns could easily uncover. But Google’s now replied to the letter with […]
Marge Simpson Googling Herself "All this time I thought ‘googling’ yourself meant the other thing." A PEW/Internet Survey out this week found that 47% of internet users have done ego searches, up from 22% five years ago. That nearly half of internet users are searching for themselves seems excessive, but only 3% say they check […]