Entries from April 2011 ↓
April 29th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we have three interesting articles focused on mobile privacy and the fallout from the news that Apple and Google had location-tracking files in their popular smartphones.
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In a post for his MSNBC blog The Red Tape Chronicles, consumer advocate Bob Sullivan talks about the recent iPhone location tracking story and how companies rarely face any consequences for privacy missteps. Quoting Sullivan: “It’s crazy that we’re walking into a world where companies and governments know where we are, and where we’ve been, without guiding principles to save us from ourselves. Location information should be deleted immediately after it is not needed for the exact purpose it was collected for.” Indeed, without legal protections for consumers, companies will continue to collect and store personal data with little regard for consumers.
Following the revelation that smartphone devices were storing location data on users, Representatives Joe Barton and Edward Markey sent a letter to the four major wireless carriers asking for a clarification on their privacy policies. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The carriers—AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA—said they seek subscribers’ consent before tracking their location, but said they can’t control how applications developed by third parties use location information that the carriers don’t provide.” The article notes that app developers are not bound by any law regarding how they can use consumer data.
Along with the story that Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices were keeping location data, Google’s popular Android phones were also implicated in storing user information. In response to the controversy, Google’s director of mobile, Jason Spero, explained Google’s mobile privacy positions during an address at AppNation. According to PCMag.com, Spero said, “Google takes privacy very seriously. We think in a lot of cases we don’t work toward where the line is on the known line of privacy is; we stop well short of it, and make sure that we’re working with the industry to understand what is and what is not fair game, while delivering the best possible user experience. that we can.” Spero added that he doesn’t want “someone knowing where I am every minute of the day,” but that in certain situations, stored location data may be helpful.
April 28th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the Playstation Network breach, two new Facebook hires, and a new piece of privacy legislation.
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Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has announced that she will investigate the Playstation Network breach that left millions of users exposed to possible identity theft and fraud. Stoddart has been a major advocate for consumer privacy rights and is known for being aggressive with companies that disregard data privacy. In the past, Stoddart has come down aggressively on Facebook for changes to the site’s privacy policy.
This week’s Playstation Network breach is only the latest in a string of incidents that demonstrates how precariously user data is managed by major corporations. In this article for the New York Times Bits Blog, Nick Bilton talks with legal and privacy experts about why it’s so difficult to hold companies accountable when they put user data at risk.
Echoing a sentiment made by Reputation.com, Center for Democracy and Technology President Leslie Harris told reporters recently that the McCain-Kerry privacy legislation in Congress should not narrowly focus on a “Do Not Track” provision. According to the National Journal, “CDT has long favored comprehensive privacy legislation and was among the first to advocate for a do-not-track option. However, the group is not calling for its inclusion in the Kerry-McCain bill and instead favors the private-sector approaches already taking place.”
Prompted by the Playstation Network breach, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) “said Wednesday that she plans to introduce legislation to protect consumer data on the Internet,” according to The Hill blog. Rep. Bono Mack, who leads the Energy and Commerce Trade subcommittee, has advocated for stronger privacy policy in the past, but this is the first time she has introduced legislation on the issue.
According to the New York Times, “Facebook has hired the two founders of Daytum, a Web site that offers tools to record personal data and create visualizations from it.” The two men behind Daytum, Nicholas Felton and Ryan Case, will join the product design team at Facebook. The Dayum data will likely be tasked with developing new ways to visualize the massive amounts of data shared by users on Facebook everyday.
A 21-year-old candidate for local office in the U.K. has resigned after demeaning comments about women appeared on his Facebook page. According to the BBC, the candidate made his error “during a Facebook discussion in which he said he wanted to ‘settle down with someone decent,’” and that “it was ‘impossible to find someone with morals and a bit of self-respect.’” He went on to write, “It’s the ones that look respectable and decent but underneath it all are complete sluts that you got to watch out for.” Representatives from both major political parties criticized the comments.
April 27th, 2011 | CyberBullying, Facebook, Google, Internet Safety, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, Apple finally responds to claims that the company has been surreptitiously tracking user location information, Sony faces reputation damage over its response to a hacker attack, and two pre-teen girls are charged with cyberstalking for impersonating a classmate on Facebook.
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Following a tense week in which privacy advocates and Senators criticized the company for its lax response to claims that it tracked user location data via its iPhone and iPad devices, Apple has announced that it “would make changes to how it stores data about the location of Wi-Fi hotspots to address concerns over privacy.” Apple maintains it wasn’t tracking the data, but did acknowledge a programming error that kept the data for a long period of time. Apple will not keep the data for more than seven days going forward. Apple will begin encrypting the location files in the next software update.
Ars Technica has an excellent analysis of the Playstation Network hack and what it means for users as well as for Sony. Ars Technica reports that Sony’s reluctance to confirm the hack attack will hurt the company’s reputation, but it won’t face any significant impact legally. Also, while many users were impacted by the attack, security researchers argue that Sony wouldn’t be liable for damages related to identity theft either. That being said, individual users must be on high alert for identity theft and Beth Givens, of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, offers some tips on what to avoid.
Two pre-teen girls in Issaquah, Washington, have been charged with cyberstalking after they illegally accessed a classmate’s Facebook account and used it to “send out messages offering sex to boys at school and to post lewd updates.” If convicted of the charge, both of the girls could face up to 30 days in juvenile detention.
With Facebook’s more than 600 million users, there are bound to be people who share the same name. Usually, it’s not a big deal. But if you share that name with the woman who is about to become a princess, things get a little tricky. Across the world, women named Kate Middleton have found themselves struggling to gain access to their Facebook accounts because Facebook has tagged them as fakes. This article describes how one Boston woman named Kate Middleton has been forced off of Facebook, but is using the resulting publicity to raise money for charity.
In an op-ed, Drew Voros, the Oakland Tribune Business Editor, argues that Facebook’s size and active userbase belies the notion that individuals care deeply about online privacy. Quoting the article, “Nowhere do privacy concerns ring more hollow than on Facebook, where the world’s most visited website is produced by the personal information users willingly give up.” However, Voros’ argument presupposes that all Facebook users understand the way that their information is being used, which is not necessarily the case.
The literary magazine Read and the youth nonprofit organization The Ophelia Project have banded together to produce a social media version of Shakespeare’s famous comedy Much Ado About Nothing. The play, which involves deception and betrayal, will be acted out via Facebook updates on the fictional character’s wall. Many of the themes in the play are relevant to teens today, particular as they relate to online bullying.
April 26th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the fallout from the news that Apple and Google mobile devices track user information, plus give an update on the unfortunate extra that spoiled Glee on Twitter.
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Two Apple customers have filed a lawsuit against the company over the recent revelation that a hidden file in iPhone and iPad devices records a user’s location and stores the data on an individual’s computer. The men are seeking class-action status and hope to include one-third to one-half of the country’s iPhone users (20-30 million people) to join the lawsuit.
According to the AP, “a German privacy watchdog is demanding answers from Apple Inc. over whether its iPhones and iPads are secretly collecting data on users’ locations.” Germany is known for being one of the world’s staunchest defenders of personal privacy. Since the revelation of Apple’s location tracking file, U.S. politicians have also made inquiry to Apple over the issue.
A Chicago Sun-Times op-ed argues that consumers should not allow technology to outpace privacy. Quoting the article, “Rapidly changing, vague and often-unread privacy policies won’t safeguard our personal information. We need a system that gives us a better heads-up so that Congress can be alerted in time to step in and prevent future abuses before they happen.”
An extra on the popular show Glee angered fans and hurt her chances of getting another job last week when she posted an update on Twitter spoiling an important plot point from an upcoming episode of the show. Now, the woman has come out and apologized for the message, saying “I had no idea it would blow up like this, I do regret it.” According to reports, the woman’s tweet may have cost her dearly. The student was told, “that she’d never work on another Fox program again” and “she’s also been suspended from her extra casting agencies for two to three weeks.”
April 25th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the royal wedding and how one soldier’s Facebook comments will keep him watching from home. We also follow-up on some of the Apple location privacy news from last week.
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An 18-year-old British soldier and member of the Scots Guard has been removed from his post guarding the forthcoming royal wedding of Prince William over Facebook comments he made about bride-to-be Kate Middleton. According to reports, the guard wrote of Middleton, “Her and William drove past me on Friday and all I got was a s***** wave while she looked the opposite way from me, stupid, stuck up cow. Am I not good enough for them! Posh b****. Who really gives a f*** about her?” The soldier’s Facebook page also contained racist and anti-semitic comments.
An Internet security expert recently spoke at the National Union of Teachers conference on the subject of Facebook and online reputation management. This article in the Guardian recalls the expert’s presentation and describes some of the ways that U.K. teachers have run into trouble over Facebook interactions with students or as bullying victims.
A British teen, who caused over $200,000 in damage to a public library with a simple prank, pleaded not guilty to the crime in court. The teen’s defense was shredded apart quickly, however, when the prosecutor discovered the boy had talked about the prank openly on his Facebook page, admitting his guilt in the process.
Apple users all over the world are curious about the privacy ramifications from the recent revelation that iPhone and iPad devices have been storing location data on users in a hidden file. Since the news became public, Apple has yet to address the issue, but Forbes privacy blogger Kashmir Hill has posted a video Apple CEO Steve Jobs talking about location privacy issues at a 2010 conference. During an interview at the conference, Jobs said, ““Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for in plain English and repeatedly.” One could argue that this recent revelation proves a different philosophy at work.
In an informal, non-scientific poll at WSJ.com, the Wall Street Journal asked its readers, “How concerned are you that the iPhone tracks and stores your location?” Out of 6,993 total votes, 50.9% of respondents have said “very concerned” while 13.8% have said “somewhat concerned.”
