Tag archive: privacy

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard about the great Path disaster: the social iOS app was found to be pulling and storing users’ entire contact lists without proper permission. After Path was put through the ringer, apologized, and thus subject to our still-simmering frustration, we found that it wasn’t the only offender. Hipster was also doing this, and Instagram quietly slid a new contacts permission prompt into its update. So at this point,… Read More

Last week, there was more than a little pitchfork- and torch-grabbing surrounding the Path privacy debacle. It was revealed that the social networking application was uploading users’ entire address books without disclosure. It was quickly found that Path was not the sole offender, and the PR nightmare ensued. Apologies have since been given and received, and the entire situation has generally quieted. But we noticed that one social app tried to… Read More

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit in Federal court against the FTC yesterday, hoping to compel the government to enforce a privacy agreement it reached last year with Google. EPIC alleges that Google’s brand new privacy policy, which will allow the search giant to share user data across all of its services, including YouTube, Picasa, Gmail, and even Search, violates its previous agreement to allow users to opt-out of… Read More

When it comes to handling a PR crisis, the best bet is to be 100 percent honest and transparent with your customers, and to act as quickly as possible to fix the problem. And that is exactly what social network app company Path has done. As many of you likely already know, a developer discovered on Tuesday that the latest version of Path (“Path 2″) for iOS was uploading users' entire address books to the Path servers without… Read More

On Tuesday, social networking app Path took a fireball of heat after a developer discovered that the latest version of its app automatically uploads users' entire address book every time they logged into the network. Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin quickly swooped in to do damage control, saying an update to the Android version of the app already requires users to opt-in, and the same change is coming soon for the iOS version. Today,… Read More

A local government official has warned users of Chinese microblogging services—weibos—in Beijing that they must post under their real names no later than March 16 or be banned from the services. The move comes after the Chinese capital issued requirements late last year that weibos users re-register for micro-blogging services under their real names to enable authorities to more easily monitor and block them if they post material the government… Read More

In a nicely candid move, Motorola Mobility has come forward and admitted that it accidentally sold 100 refurbished Xoom Android tablets through Woot.com without first wiping the devices to remove previous customers' data. Motorola would like to get the devices back from any buyers, and has extended two years of free Experian ProtextMyID service to any customers who returned a Xoom tablet between March and October 2011 to protect them from… Read More

Google has taken quite a beating for its privacy policy change. After combining its myriad of terms of service into a single sign-on, more-unified system, users and advocates cried foul. The changes, while simplifying things when it comes to what and how much users are agreeing to, also opened up some new possibilities for predictive advertising. Whenever a company as big and far-reaching as Google makes such a core switch, there’s bound to be… Read More

Security firm Symantec raised eyebrows last week with a security notice about software it has dubbed Android.Counterclank, malware that the company claims can be found in over a dozen apps in the official Android market that have been installed as many as 5 million times. According to Symantec, CounterClank is a “bot-like” threat that, once installed on an Android device, can steal information and pass it along to a malicious host,… Read More

If there's one thing people associate with modern technology, it's passwords. They're everywhere, and most of us use them for dozens of things every day. Yet most people are shockingly indifferent about their password security. Most of us probably know someone who uses the same password for everything, from their computer and email to their Facebook and bank accounts — and that password might be something as obvious as their… Read More

Did you know January 28 is Data Privacy Day in the United States, Canada, and the European Union? The intention behind Data Privacy Day is to raise awareness of the importance of protecting the privacy of personal information—not just amongst individual users of things like social networking, but also amongst businesses, organizations, and corporations that collect, retain, and access information about their clients, customers, and users.… Read More

While we’ve known for quite some time that Google likes to take account of our activity across its products for personalization purposes, consumer concern has been heightened by its new singular privacy policy system. There are benefits to the upgrade, but some are worried about getting too much customization in with your search queries. If you generally want to keep your Google applications free of personalization, here are a few ways to… Read More

The European Commission has outlined a proposal for reforming data protection laws in the European Union, touting the move as a way to both protect consumers' and individuals' privacy as well as save businesses billions every year by reducing the overhead needed to comply with current regulations. As outlined by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, the proposed laws would make data protection requirements uniform across the… Read More

Yesterday Google announced it would be “simplifying” its privacy policy so that all separate Google product accounts would be tied together for a single signup system. As expected, privacy advocates are outraged by the change and Google’s failure to allow users to opt-out. To Google's credit, there are some issues here that needed to be fixed–but in the process, it could sacrificing user trust and search accuracy.  In Google’s… Read More

Announced on the Official Google Blog earlier today, Google will be simplifying how the privacy policy is structured across more than 60 different Google products on March 1, 2012. Users will definitely benefit from the simplicity of a single document regarding privacy instead of sixty policies, but may not like the company direction stated within the blog post. As outlined in the revised privacy policy and terms of service, any user action on… Read More