Speaking of the research ethics related to automatically harvesting public social networking data, we are confronted this week with the story of Pete Warden, a former Apple engineer who has spent the last six months harvesting and analyzing data from…
Read More Why Pete Warden Should Not Release Profile Data on 215 Million Facebook Users
While participating in the workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research, the question arose as to whether it was ethical for researchers to follow and systematically capture public Twitter streams without first obtaining…
Read More Is it Ethical to Harvest Public Twitter Accounts without Consent?
January 28, 2010 is Data Privacy Day. To celebrate, MichaelZimmer.org no longer uses any services that rely on web cookies or web bugs...
Microsoft has fired a new salvo into the search privacy wars, announcing it will delete IP addresses from the Bing search engine logs after 6 months. Microsoft has decided to take the lead in search privacy and agree to the European Union’s demand that data retention be cut to six months. Previously, Microsoft de-identified its search logs immediately, but didn’t purge the IP address until 18 months. Now, de-identification still takes place immediately, and the IP addresses are completely removed in 6 months.
Responding to the brouhaha caused by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent proclamation that social norms on privacy have loosened, Michael Arrington (the tech blogger who was interviewing Zuckerberg at the time) has posted a piece on his blog Tech Crunch:…
There's been quite a dust-up regarding Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent proclamation that social norms on privacy have changed, and that Facebook is merely reacting to these shifting norms. Lots has already been said about Zuckerberg's remarks, so I'm only going to add three thoughts to the conversation: What Zuckerberg said isn't surprising, it isn't new, and it isn't true...
One of the most controversial aspects of Facebook’s recent privacy upgrade downgrade has been the removal of the privacy setting allowing users to limit the visibility of their list of friends. Perhaps more than any other set of information on…
Read More Facebook Provides Some Control of Friends List Visibility, But Hides It
Recently I’ve commented on Facebook’s new privacy paradigm, and went so far to applaud Facebook’s promise to give users more specific control over individual posts, as well as the promise to simply its privacy settings. My enthusiasm was tempered with…
Read More Facebook’s Privacy Upgrade is a Downgrade for User Privacy
Last week I commented on Facebook’s new privacy paradigm, which they said would launch “in the next couple of weeks”. Seems that process is starting today. Here is Facebook’s spin: Facebook Asks More Than 350 Million Users Around the World…
Google has announced a new "feature" to its homepage: upon loading, only the Google logo, the search box and the search buttons are visible. The links to additional products, advanced search function, and the privacy policy, only fade in if…
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