Clearly there’s a lot of balancing that needs to go on: the balancing of Venables’ right to anonymity vs. the public’s right to discover or discuss public information. Then there’s the practical challenge of regulating (and holding responsible) social media and search sites vs. the ability of those sites to constrain or regulate their users’ behavior.
Twitter Expands Bi-Annual Transparency Report With More US Info
Coinciding with Data Privacy Day, Twitter has produced its second Twitter Transparency Report, sharing more details about U.S. legal requests, saying that 90 percent are in the form of subpoenas, court orders or warrants. The report also details when Twitter notifies users if a request has been made about their account.
Google In Privacy Flap With Germans Over New iOS Maps
In case you missed it last week - according to a report in Computerworld, Google has violated German data protection and privacy rules with its new Google Maps app for the iPhone. When users install the app and agree to the terms and conditions there’s a check box that authorizes Google to collect “anonymous” user location data. The fact that this box is an opt-out (rather than an opt-in) violates German privacy regulations, which require “informed consent” where personal data collection is involved.
Source: searchengineland.com
A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that most US parents are concerned about their kids’ online privacy and also about how much advertisers are able to learn about their kids’ online behavior.
Source: marketingland.com
Survey: Most Users Support “Do Not Track” Idea, Don’t Want Websites To Collect Their Data
As part of the Amsterdam Privacy Conference held earlier this week in The Netherlands, professors from the UC Berkeley School of Law presented research on US consumer attitudes toward online privacy and the concept of “do not track” (DNT) in particular. The three professors behind the research, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Jennifer M. Urban and Su Li, have published several consumer privacy studies, most recently in the context of mobile payments.
This new survey, supporting the report “Privacy and Modern Advertising,” was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 1,203 US adult internet users in Q1 of this year.
Source: marketingland.com
The Pew Internet Project just released survey data revealing that mobile users may be a great deal more sensitive to privacy issues than most developers and publishers think.
Source: searchengineland.com
NBC Olympics Executive’s Email Wasn’t “Widely Available” In Google
by Danny Sullivan
The interwebs are all a flutter over how a critic of NBC’s Olympic coverage had his Twitter account suspended after tweeting the email address of the executive in charge of that coverage. It was private, said Twitter. Public to anyone with Google, said journalist Guy Adams, whose account was suspended. Actually, from what I can tell, it really wasn’t public to anyone with Google.
Privacy Concerns Remain for Location-Based Service Users
Tellingly, almost one-quarter of respondents said their greatest privacy concern was having their information used for marketing purposes.
