Matt McAlister writes a wonderful (and only partially tongue-in-cheek) post on how Google has morphed from a search company into an advertising company, and eventually into "a fast-growing capitalistic enterprise competing for world domination." Some excerpts:The AutoLink debate seems more…
Category: Platforms
Personalized search: who owns the information?
In an interesting post forecasting the rise of personalized searching, Greg Yardley raises an important concern about who actually "owns" the personal information/history upon which search companies will base "personalization." Pretend it’s December, 2007. You’ve been using Google (or Yahoo,…
ChoicePoint to give up some personal data sales
Finally, an encouraging development from the ChoicePoint fiasco. InfoWorld reports that ChoicePoint will stop selling sensitive consumer data to many of its customers, except when that data helps complete a consumer transaction or helps government or law enforcement. Perhaps an…
Yahoo to preserve e-mail of Marine killed in Iraq
One example of the type of ethical issues that cross Srinija Srinivasan's desk at Yahoo! is whether family members should have access to the e-mail of a deceased relative. From Yahoo's perspective, to release messages from a deceased user's e-mail…
Choicepoint’s CISO Interview & “Social Hacking”
ChoicePoint's CISO, Richard Baich, is interviewed by SecuritySearch.com, where he makes his case that the ChoicePoint fiasco is not a security or hacking issue:This is not an information security issue. My biggest concern is the impact this has on the…
Srinija Srinivasan: Perception and Policy at Yahoo!
Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's editor-in-chief, presented at the latest Colloquium on Information Technology & Society hosted by the Information Law Institute at the New York University School of Law. Her talk was "Perception and Policy at Yahoo!" and discussed her role…
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Credit Reporting Agencies Blocking Referrals to Free Credit Report Website
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the three credit reporting agencies are blocking referral links to the Annual Credit Report website they created to conform to the new federal law giving consumers the right to an annual free credit report:Although…
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Google Auto-Link Function Raises Copyright/Trademark Discussion
[source: The Trademark Blog]The new Google toolbar adds links to content through a function named Auto-Link. For example, it is my understanding that if an address appears on a webpage, a program in Google's toolbar can create a link from…
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Summary of incidents cataloged at The Privacy Law Blog
David Fraser at The Privacy Law Blog has an excellent post today cataloging incidents over the past year related to inappropriate release of personal information. The list is frightening both for its length and for the realization that countless incidents…
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Is Momentum Building Against Database Aggregation of Personal Data?
Rob Hyndman reacts to the increasing number of reports of identity thefts and personal data disclosures by speculating whether Americans are now ready to do something about it:There has been an increasing number of media stories lately on this topic,…
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