UPDATE – In an attempt to reign in the tendency of indifference toward consumer privacy among mobile application developers, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today made public a list of guidelines regulating the ways in which mobile application developers and technology companies handle user data and educate users about what they intend on doing with that data.
In a closely watched case, a federal judge today ruled against a high school sophomore who refused to wear a student ID embedded with a radio frequency chip that tracks students’ movement on campus.
Facebook has patched a vulnerability that could have allowed a malicious user to bypass certain security restrictions, according to Sow Ching Shiong, an independent security researcher who discovered the flaw on the popular social network earlier this week.
California and U.S. authorities are investigating whether Kaiser Permanente violated some 300,000 patients’ privacy when dealing with a Mom and Pop document storage company that kept medical records in a shared warehouse and stored sensitive data on home computers.
In spring of last year, reports began surfacing that some employers were demanding that current and sometimes prospective employees hand over the log-in credentials or otherwise provide access to their various social media accounts. People were outraged. Such invasions of what many perceive as their personal, albeit, online privacy prompted much debating and the writing of a never-ending slew opinion pieces.
The Federal Trade Commission Tuesday demanded nine data brokerage companies turn over details on how they collect and use consumer information as part of an inquiry into the industry’s business practices.The companies include Acxiom of Little Rock, Ark.; Corelogic of Irvine, Calif.; Datalogix of Westminster, Colo.; eBureau of St. Cloud, Minn.; ID Analytics of San Diego; Intelius of Bellevue, Wash.; Peekyou of New York; Rapleaf of Chicago; and Recorded Future of Cambridge, Mass.
Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom responded to a firestorm of protests from users of the photo-sharing social network’s proposed terms of service changes that could impact the privacy of its users.
Instagram users have some soul searching to do between now and Jan. 16 when new terms of service kick in that give the photo-sharing social network the right to sell personal photos without the user’s permission or compensating them.
In what may be the least surprising news of the day, Facebook is again making changes to its privacy controls.The existing privacy controls, which we explored in depth in our How-To Video on the subject, are a bit convoluted. So it makes sense that product manager Samuel Lessin is rolling out some end-of-the-year privacy feature updates on the world’s largest social network that are essentially designed to clarify existing features and seamlessly integrate privacy controls into Facebook’s primary interface.
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday said it’s launching “non-public investigations” to determine if mobile application providers are violating federal laws by collecting information on children without their parents’ permission.A report indicates almost 60 percent (235) of the children-centric mobile apps the agency reviewed from Google and Apple app stores collected device IDs and other private data often shared with an advertising network, analytics company or other third party. More than half also displayed advertising, such as one children’s app that showed an advertisement for an adult singles club. Only 20 percent disclosed their privacy policy.
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