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Privacy 2.0: No Privacy at All - Columns by PC Magazine - Via Columns by PC Magazine :
Google's limiting the length of time it keeps records on people? Big deal. Why the public puts up with any tracking whatsoever is a mystery to me.
When Google said it would limit the length of time it kept records on people, privacy advocates thought this was a step in the right direction. That the public puts up with any tracking whatsoever amazes me.
In the news this week, AT&T and Verizon said they won't track users unless users want to be tracked. I found this paragraph in this Washington Post article to be the best summary, and also quite revealing: read more »
New Jersey's Cablevision Hijacks DNS Error Pages - Via Slashdot:
Selikoff writes "I just noticed Cablevision's Optimum Online service has begun hijacking DNS Error pages with, you guessed it, ad-supported results. Aside from hurting the underlying stability of the Internet, there have been instances where hackers have used such tools against customers. I know Road Runner customers have had to deal with this for a couple months now, although at least they have an outlet to turn it off." --- Update: 09/30 13:18 GMT by T : Note, as several readers have pointed out, this hijacking is of DNS errors rather than 404 errors as originally presented.
(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot .)
Editor: My provider, Verizon, has been doing this also for a while. But if you push hard enought they will give you alternate DNS servers without this 'feature'.
BT to kick off fresh Phorm trial - Via BBC NEWS | Technology :
Telecoms giant BT is about to start further trials of a controversial internet advertising technology.
Developed by Phorm, the Webwise system watches what people do online and shows adverts tuned to their interests.
From 30 September, a sample of BT's customers will be invited to "opt in" to a trial of the technology.
Early trials ran without the consent of customers which led to complaints from rights groups who said this broke laws governing the interception of data. read more »
AT&T, Verizon Back Opt-In Approach for Behavioral Advertising - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
Earlier this week, we set out our wish list for what we hoped to hear from witnesses during today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on behavioral advertising as this emerging online marketing practice comes under congressional scrutiny.
We are pleased that the telecom companies testifying today, AT&T and Verizon, appear headed in the right direction.
Both companies strongly embraced setting a high bar for engaging in behavioral advertising and challenged the rest of the industry to do the same. Dorothy Attwood, senior vice president of Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T, said her company was committing to a policy of “advance, affirmative consumer consent,” noting that the phrase is “generically referred to as “opt-in.” read more »
ISPs Facing Privacy Scrutiny Likely to Point At Google - Via Threat Level:
Google is not an ISP, but at Thursday’s Senate hearing on privacy and ISPs, expect the search and online advertising giant's name to be the keyword invoked by ISPs wishing to escape the attention of legislators.
ISPs have good reason to want to be forgotten.
Earlier this year, lawmakers all but killed off the idea of letting ISPs watch their customers' web usage in order to serve them targeted ads after Charter Communications retreated from its plan to test such technology and several smaller ISPs admitted to secret tests of such technology from NebuAd.
But ISPs are hungry for new revenue so expect that AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner – three of the nation’s top ISPs – will take the opportunity Thursday in front of the Senate Commerce committee to favorably compare their privacy practices and market reach to Google's.
In fact, don't be surprised if the ISPs suggest that Google is the one that needs some federal rules written for it and that ISPs need to be free to find ways to serve targeted ads to their customers. read more »
What to Keep an Ear Out For at the Next Behavioral Advertising Hearing - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
The Senate Commerce Committee has a hearing scheduled on Thursday to hear from ISPs about their plans for implementing behavioral advertising. CDT has been in discussions with many of these companies and believe that some have begun to make a commitment to getting policies and practices right and push others in the online industries to do the same, as they make decisions whether or not to go forward with behavioral targeting plans. Decoding congressional testimony is something of an art form; here’s what we’ll be listening for: words and phrases like “meaningful and affirmative consent,” “transparency,” and “user control.” If you check the box next to each of those you’ll know that things are on the right track, which will be a welcome change from the rhetoric we heard from the CEO of NebuAd during the last Senate hearing on behavioral advertising. read more »
CDT Policy Post: Closer Look at ISP-Ad Network Partnerships - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
CDT issued a policy post today that takes a closer look at the privacy concerns raised by the ISP-ad network partnership model within the online behavioral advertising field. Behavioral advertising involves the compilation of detailed information about an Internet user’s online activities. That data, when collected, can be turned into detailed consumer profiles including articles read, web sites visited, and items purchased. Today's policy post says the ISP-ad network model may violate federal law if it deployed without express consent of subscribers. CDT notes that Congress is taking a closer look at the practice and that online consumer privacy law may be introduced to address concerns.
(Read Original Article - Via Center for Democracy and Technology.)
Digital Wallpaper - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
Television screens increasingly blaze in spaces outside of homes. In many settings, particularly at retail establishments, the TVs are perpetually tuned to a channel with nothing but commercials. In other instances, such as schools and government offices, the screens flash announcements and public safety information. This up-and-coming medium goes by different names, including captive audience networks, but the most common is digital signage.
Now, in a development with significant privacy implications, digital signage is slowly integrating identification technologies. The purpose is to boost audience measurement and exposure. The industry’s eventual wish is to target advertising to individual consumers based on demographics and shopping history. read more »
Phorm: Our business is fine, honest - Via The Register (UK) :
After its share price slumped to a new low, Phorm today sought to allay investor fears about the ISP-level adware business by repeating assurances that a critical third trial with BT will go ahead.
Yesterday Phorm closed at £5.80, an all time low. The announcement seems to be having the desired effect; at time of writing Phorm's stock is up more than 16 per cent at £7.12. Its February peak at £35.04 remains a distant dream for stockholders, however.
Phorm's latest slide followed newspaper stories in the US in the past few days that voiced serious doubts over whether its business will ever gain public or regulatory acceptance. Yesterday Bob Dykes, the founder of Phorm rival NebuAd, quit as its CEO.
In soothing the markets today, Phorm said "significant and accelerating" progress has been made on a test targeting advertising based on the browsing habits of 10,000 BT broadband customers. read more »
A Setback for ISP Web Tracking - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
angelheaded tips a Wired story about the resignation of Bob Dykes, CEO of net eavesdropping firm NebuAd. NebuAd has encountered financial troubles lately as the privacy controversy surrounding the company's tracking methods has driven communications companies away. Over in the UK, Phorm responded to the NebuAd news by affirming that it is making progress with its advertising methods. read more »
Meet the Latest Copyright Scofflaw -- Meet the GOP - Via Threat Level:
Seattle-based rock band Heart on Friday informed the GOP it was not amused with the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket.
Late Thursday, the group's hit song "Barracuda" was blaring in the background when the presidential hopefuls kicked off their campaign at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Heart's publishers -- Universal Music and Sony BMG -- sent the Grand Old Party a cease-and-desist notice, marking the third time in as many months the GOP has been accused of hijacking copyrighted works as it jockeys for the White House. All the while, the party was threatening to sue CafePress for hosting an online venue for vendors to hawk trademarked GOP-related regalia like T-shirts, stickers and portrayals of the elephants.
"We have asked the Republican campaign not to use our music," Ann and Nancy Wilson wrote on their web site. read more »
ISPs Will All Spy on Their Customers, Professor Warns - Via Threat Level:
If there's a candidate for the worst future violator of your privacy, look no further than the company you pay for broadband.
So says University of Colorado law professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Ohm, who argues in a new article that ISPs have the means, motive and opportunity to kill your online privacy.
Nothing in society poses as grave a threat to privacy as the Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs carry their users’ conversations, secrets, relationships, acts, and omissions. Until the very recent past, they had left most of these alone because they had lacked the tools to spy invasively, but with recent advances in eavesdropping technology, they can now spy on people in unprecedented ways. Meanwhile, advertisers and copyright owners have been tempting them to put their users’ secrets up for sale, and judging from a recent flurry of reports, ISPs are giving in to the temptation and experimenting with new forms of spying. This is only the leading edge of a coming storm of unprecedented and invasive ISP surveillance.
But is that true?
Ohm argues technological and economic forces virtually guarantee that ISPs will begin finding ways to make money by monitoring, categorizing and even storing everything their users do on their networks.
Those are indisputable facts. read more »
ISP Web Tracking Dead As Net Eavesdropping CEO Resigns - Via Threat Level:
Online privacy scored a small victory this week as the CEO for controversial net eavesdropping firm NebuAD resigned just months after Congress successfully scared the country's ISPs into abandoning dreams of windfall profits from tracking their customers around the web.
Dykes's resignation can best be understood as the death -- if only temporary one -- of a scheme to track online users' every click and search in order to serve just the right ad at the right time - a service that companies will pay a premium for.
NebuAd's business model was to pay ISPs to let it install equipment to monitor where people surfed and what they searched on, in order to deliver targeted ads based on the user's profile. ISPs hungry to be more than just a railroad company warmed to the idea of new revenue.
But after one of the nation's largest ISPs, Charter Communication, announced plans to test NebuAd technology, the House Energy and Commerce committee became very interested whether tracking people's every move on the net violated federal law. The inquiry dealt a critical blow to the company, since it quickly became apparent that no ISP was going to take on a powerful House telecom committee to defend untested and clearly creepy technology. read more »
Privacy concerns may derail Web-tracking venture - Via The Boston Globe:
NEW YORK - It sounded like a winning proposition - free money - for Internet access providers. By tracking their subscribers' Web surfing habits, they could help deliver ads targeted to consumers' interests, and claim a share of the burgeoning online advertising market dominated by Internet search companies like Google and Yahoo.
But slow-building privacy storm moved in on NebuAd Inc., the Silicon Valley start-up that can facilitate the Web tracking. And its potential partners, the Internet service providers, failed to make the case that they should be in the ad business at all, rather than simply being the pipes that pass Internet traffic back and forth.
One by one, cable and phone companies that had conducted trials using NebuAd's ad-serving system have indefinitely suspended expansion plans. Executives at the Internet services blame the climate in Congress.
"A bunch of them have dropped [NebuAd] like hot potatoes," said Gigi Sohn, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge. read more »
Accidental Ad Blocker - Via Post I.T. - A Technology Blog From The Washington Post - (washingtonpost.com):
Privacy advocates think the next version of Internet Explorer, the program that connects most of us to the Web, is a step in the right direction.
Advertisers? Well, they're not so sure.
The advertising industry is bracing for trouble from the next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, details of which were announced today, because it will offer a feature that blocks some ads and other content from third-parties that shows up on Web pages.
"It has the potential to undermine the economies of the Internet," said Mike Zaneis, vice president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. read more »
Technology's Toll on Privacy and Security: In-Depth Reports in Scientific American's Special Issue - Via Scientific American:
Computers, databases and networks have connected us like never before, but at what cost?
SciAm's issue on Privacy. Our jittery state since 9/11, coupled with the Internet revolution, is shifting the boundaries between public interest and "the right to be let alone"
A cold wind is blowing across the landscape of privacy. The twin imperatives of technological advancement and counterterrorism have led to dramatic and possibly irreversible changes in what people can expect to remain of private life. Nearly 10 years ago Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems famously pronounced the death of privacy. “Get over it,” he said. Some people, primarily those younger than about 25, claim to have done just that, embracing its antithesis, total public disclosure. And of course in many cases—determining the whereabouts of a terrorist or the carrier of a disease—public interest has an overwhelming claim on information that is usually private.
Yet in many contexts—banking, commerce, diplomacy, medicine—private communications are essential. The founding fathers of the Republic put great stock in personal privacy; privacy is embodied (though, as we are often reminded, not stated) in the Bill of Rights. In her keynote essay Esther Dyson clarifies what “privacy” means by reminding us what it is not: several important issues commonly labeled dilemmas of privacy are better understood as issues of security, health policy, insurance or self-presentation. read more »
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