AOL has issued an apology for releasing the logs of nearly 20 million web searches documenting three months of activity by 650,000 AOL users: "This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it. It was an innocent enough…
Tag: Online Privacy
AOL Data Includes Social Security Numbers
Have you ever searched for your social security number to see if it happened to be posted online somewhere? Have you searched for it along with your name? Many do, and it has apparently been confirmed that the massive database…
AOL Proudly Releases Massive Amounts of Private Data
[I've pasted this in its entirety from TechCrunch - unbelievable] AOL must have missed the uproar over the DOJ’s demand for “anonymized” search data last year that caused all sorts of pain for Microsoft and Google. That’s the only way…
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Others Online: Opt-In Web Surveillance
A new service called Others Online makes obvious what Google Toolbar and other browser tools do in the background: track users web browsing activities. From their site: Others Online is a free toolbar that shows you people relevant to your…
Privacy-protected web search with Ixquick
In response to growing concerns over search engine privacy, the metasearch engine Ixquick has announced it will permanently delete all personal search details gleaned from its users from their log files. From their press release: As digital technology increasingly pervades…
Municipal WiFi is Coming, and Why Privacy Advocates Should Care
Graham Longford, a postdoc at the Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP) at the University of Toronto, has contributed a nice essay on the privacy considerations of municipal wi-fi over at the On the Identity Trail blog. Graham notes many…
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NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant
I am pleased to announce that I have been awarded a Science & Society Dissertation Improvement Grant from the Division of Social and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation. This grant will support my dissertation research of the value…
Emily of the State, your friendly Internet surveillance avatar
The Canadian comedy troupe Cynically Tested has posted an Internet short on YouTube featuring "Emily of the State," a satirical look at how ISPs could enable government surveillance of one's online activities through a "helpful" avatar, Emily: YouTube - Emily…
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FlickrInspector Helps you Mine Flickr’s Data
FlickrInspector is a new tool to help make amateur data-mining of Web 2.0 more efficient. Enter a Flickr username, user ID, or email, and FlickrInspector gives you all the "publicly available" information on that Flickr user, including "interestingness", recently uploaded…
Tracking Web Users with ClickTale
Fellow PhD student Alice Marwick blogs about TechCrunch's coverage of ClickTale, the latest in website surveillance tools: ClickTale shows you the full story: every mouse movement, every click and every scrolling action. By using ClickTale you will gain insights that…
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