Posting Online Pics
A California federal judge approved a $9.5-million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over social networking site Facebook’s program Beacon that published what users were buying. This on the heals of outgoing Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, who said that Facebook, Google, and other major U.S. Internet companies need to better protect the privacy of their users.
According to PC World and other accounts, Harbour said during an FTC privacy workshop, “I am especially concerned that technology companies are learning harmful lessons from each other’s attempts to push the privacy envelope. Even the most respected and popular online companies, the ones who claim to respect privacy, continue to launch products where the guiding privacy policy seems to be, ‘Throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.’”
Privacy advocates are exploring whether the Facebook settlement can be appealed describing the settlement as a “sweetheart deal.” Harbour, who is leaving the FTC next month, says she advocates “intolerance” toward companies that push the privacy envelope only to backtrack when consumers protest that their data has been publicly exposed.
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” commented Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt during an interview with CNBC. These are the guardians of the secrets. Keep this in mind when making your next post!
On Mar 20, 2010 5:56pm PC Magazine post: Google Reconsiders Privacy Practices by Paul Suarez. “The Google Analytics team has been working to give users a choice on how their Internet browsing data is collected by the analytics and marketing tool, according to a blog post by Amy Chang, group product manager.” For more see the attached link:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/191998/google_reconsiders_privacy_practices.html