There's been a flurry of activity in recent weeks related to the privacy concerns of online behavioral advertising. Earlier this month, TRUSTe released a whitepaper designed to help online businesses assess and better understand their own privacy practices related to…
Read More Recent Activities in the Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Sphere
This week, Google launched Google Latitude, a new Google Maps feature that lets users share location data with friends, using either a mobile phone or through an interface on iGoogle. (see how it works here) Unsurprisingly, concerns have arisen regarding…
Read More With Latitude, Google Actually Got it (Mostly) Right
Imagine you were in a room with Google's top product and policy folks, and you were asked "What is the one thing Google should do better for users?" What would you suggest? For me, it probably would be for Google…
Here's an interesting story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noting that some Marquette University sororities are requiring their pledges keep off of Facebook until the rush is over. There seems to be two possible reasons for the Facebook blackout. One,…
Read More University Sororities Banning Facebook during Rush
It has been a while since I wrote about electronic/online medical records, but two stories popped onto my radar that deserve mention. The first focuses on the inherent threats of having medical information stored and displayed electronically: bugs. Apparently one-third…
Read More Electronic Medical Records: Threats & Opportunities
Following up, the DVD for the hit action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye” has been released. The second disc of the 2-disc special edition includes the commentary "Is My Cellphone Spying on Me?", featuring reflections on technology and surveillance by the actors…
Read More “Is My Cellphone Spying on Me?” Eagle Eye DVD Commentary
There has been a lot of movemnet recently regarding how search engines treat the vast amounts of user data they collect. In early 2007, Google announced it would "anonymize" its user search logs after 18-24 months. Later that year, Google…
File this under "duh" - via Wired Threat Level: Wikipedia's functionality was returning to normal Tuesday after an internet watchdog group removed the online encyclopedia from a child porn watchlist. The brouhaha began Saturday, when the England-based Internet Watch Foundation…
Read More Blacklisting Wikipedia to Prevent Spread of Child Porn Increases Spread of Child Porn
I recently taped an interview with Milwaukee's public radio affiliate, WUWM, and it aired today. The topic was privacy and technology, focusing mostly on how to balance the speed and ubiquity of new technology, the conveniences they provide, and the…
Read More “Should we be scared?”: Privacy & technology (WUWM “Lake Effect”)
The NY Times reports that when you subscribe to a channel on YouTube, the Google-owned video sharing site publicly broadcasts this fact by putting your user information on that channel's page for anyone to see: Google’s video site lets you…
Read More YouTube: “Broadcast Yourself” means broadcasting your viewing interests for all to see
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