Recently in Privacy Category

"I don't want to have to worry about all the different online scandals and problems," says Brown, an education major at St. Joseph College in Connecticut. She'd like to control her personal information and keep it out of the hands of identity thieves or snooping future employers. "It's just common sense."

It sounds like her info is locked down and airtight. But is it?

Turns out, even the privacy-conscious Sarah Browns of the world freely hand over personal information to perfect strangers. They do so every time they download and install what's known as an "application," one of thousands of mini-programs on a growing number of social networking sites that are designed by third-party developers for anything from games and sports teams to trivia quizzes and virtual gifts.

Two consumer groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday to create a "do not track list" that would allow computer users to bar advertisers from collecting information about them.

The Consumer Federation of America and the Consumers Union also urged the FTC to bar collection of health information and other sensitive data by companies that do business on the Internet unless a consumer consents.

The call echoed those of other privacy advocates who filed statements with the FTC on Internet companies' use of "behavioral advertising." That is the practice of tracking a computer user's activities online, including Web searches and sites visited, to target advertisements to the individual consumer.

So I was looking at the Reuters this morning and saw an article that kind of annoyed me.  Not because of the reporting (top-notch) but because the article highlighted a lack of personal responsibility and a certain sense of entitlement that really bugs me.

Many people are uncomfortable with Web sites customizing content to people's personal profiles, according to a new survey.

"There's a creepy factor and a fear of the unknown that people don't want to deal with," said Michelle Warren, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ontario.

"The notion that there's a privacy issue in someone's email account hits a little too close to home for some," she added.

Nearly 60 percent of 2,513 people in the United States questioned in a Harris Interactive poll said they were uneasy when Web sites use information about personal online activity to tailor advertisements or content.

In a nutshell, the story related how a lot of people are uncomfortable with websites tracking their activity for the purposes of targeted advertising.  I understand that some people find it creepy, but it's nothing new. 

Search engines should delete personal data held about their users within six months, a European Commission advisory body on data protection has said.

The recommendation is likely to be accepted by the European Commission and could lead to a clash with search giants like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Google and Yahoo anonymise user data after 18 months, while MSN does the same after 13 months.

The body said search companies were not clear enough on data protection.

Google said its privacy policy "strikes the right balance" between privacy, security and innovation.

We missed something. Too much about the toy, not enough on the game.

I'm reading Alex's post about Western Union's new "send money by prepaid phone" service and I can't help but think there is an invitation for regulatory disaster here.

I've had to send money with Western Union once in 25 years, to a friend who was stuck in Michigan with maxed out credit cards from a ticket and impound lot, who needed cash to fill up his car and drive back east.

When I called Western Union, they asked me a whole bunch of questions to verify who I was. They had my addresses going back five years (even my college dorms) and I had to think back to remember my old home phone number growing up (301-229-9041) and even some details about my parents.

The beauty of prepaid phones, however, is that they offer some level of anonymity by disconnecting the phone number from an identity. This is useful for say, people who are whistleblowers or sources for journalists, or even for plain old privacy-minded people who are willing to pay a premium to not have a name associated with their phone.

Western Union, which discontinued their signature telegram service last year, now makes their money taking a cut of funds that people send using their network. Those remittances that enterprising immigrants send home (which are, incidentally a huge part of the global economy) make up a massive pool of funds. For instance, Ghana's economy recieved $4.5 Billion in remittances from abroad in 2005, a huge chunk of that country's GDP.

In the U.S. many undocumented/illegal immigrants get paid cash. They send this cash home via Western Union. No tax is paid at any point, except perhaps by WU. On the other hand, this is cumbersome because of the paper trail required. Let's go back to me trying to send $150 tp Michigan. They knew everything about me. I'm sure they collect just as much information on Joe Blow trying to send cash, because they've been an easy target for money laundering and other underhanded enterprises. They cover their butts.

Another thing, if sending money is going to be so easy domestically, isn't the Government going to want a cut, or want to watch the sums moving around from phone to phone? I'd like to see the privacy policy associated with this service. Is reloading my phone with minutes going to be as document-heavy as sending money? Will I have to fill out a form, or will I just be able to buy a "card" with cash, no questions asked? Can you see where this is going?

Now, if I buy a prepaid phone from this service, am I going to have to document myself the same way? What if this becomes more widespread? Could this new "feature" spell the end of the disconnection of number and identity?

If so, the prepaid phone market will be all but dead, except to those who have no other choice. What bothers me about it is that right now, I have a choice, and should continue to have a choice whether or not to be anonymous. I'm afraid that in their zeal to open a new market, Western Union could make it an attractive option for the Government to take that choice from me.

I hope not.

The opening of social networks may now accelerate thanks to that older next big thing, web-mail. As a technology, mail has come to seem rather old-fashioned. But Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other firms are now discovering that they may already have the ideal infrastructure for social networking in the form of the address books, in-boxes and calendars of their users. "E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network," says David Ascher, who managesThunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail application, for the Mozilla Foundation, which also oversees the popular Firefox web browser.

That is because the extended in-box contains invaluable and dynamically updated information about human connections. On Facebook, a social graph notoriously deteriorates after the initial thrill of finding old friends from school wears off. By contrast, an e-mail account has access to the entire address book and can infer information from the frequency and intensity of contact as it occurs. Joe gets e-mails from Jack and Jane, but opens only Jane's; Joe has Jane in his calendar tomorrow, and is instant-messaging with her right now; Joe tagged Jack "work only" in his address book. Perhaps Joe's party photos should be visible to Jane, but not Jack.

This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.