Archive for the 'Search privacy' Category
More Details on Yahoo’s New Ad Sales System, AMP!
Monday, April 7th, 2008Yahoo has issued a press release on their new ad sales system, AMP! that provided a few new insights into this “powerful new online advertising platform.” The New York Times broke this story earlier, which I blogged about here.
Interestingly, the Yahoo release avoids using the phrase “behavioral targeting” (which is mentioned in the NYT piece), […]
Article 29 Working Party: Opinion on Data Protection Issues Related to Search Engines
Monday, April 7th, 2008The European Commission’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has released their long-awaited “Opinion on Data Protection Issues Related to Search Engines” (PDF), something I’ve debated here.
At first glance, it seems we’re in agreement that the Data Protection Directive applies to the processing of personal data by search engines. Here is the executive summary:
Search […]
Proposed NY Law to Limit the Web Tracking also Requires Access to Data Collected
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008On the heels of growing public awareness of how “large Web companies are learning more about people than ever from what they search for and do on the Internet, gathering clues about the tastes and preferences of a typical user several hundred times a month,” a New York legislator has drafted a bill seeking to […]
The Challenges of the Values Advocate
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008When Ask.com launched AskEraser, a new service which promises to protect user privacy by, upon request, deleting users’ search activity from Ask.com servers, I applauded the effort, but also pointed out some of its shortcomings.
The privacy advocacy group EPIC, however, took a much more aggressive position, and sent a letter to Ask.com [pdf] urging them […]
AskEraser Launched, but Incomplete Protection
Thursday, December 13th, 2007As previously discussed, Ask.com has launched AskEraser, a new service which promises to protect user privacy by, upon request, deleting users’ search activity from Ask.com servers.
Ask has put together quite an extensive help page explaining the details of AskEraser, including important caveats about the actual coverage of the service, which has some significant gaps. For […]
Catching up - link dump
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007I’ve been incredibly busy lately, and need to quickly catch up on some recent items of note:
Siva Vaidhyanathan has launched a new blog for his forthcoming book, “The Googlization of Everything“…
…while Cory Doctorow provides his fictional vision of Google at its most evil extreme, working with Homeland Security to monitor and track citizens. My favorite […]




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