privacy

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is going ahead with a $1 billion program that will help it find persons of interest more rapidly. Between now and 2014 the money will be used to upgrade the FBI's facial recognition system and national ... fingerprint database. Officially, the upgrading program is called "Next Generation Identification" (NGI). The idea has been percolating for at least two years. In 2010, FBI representative Richard Vorder Bruegge first discussed the bureau's desire to use facial recognition technology to "identify subjects in public datasets." Bruegge ... (view more)

Google is looking for elite engineers capable of protecting the privacy of the company's users. The nature of the recruitment ads suggests the engineers will be defending users against all threats, even those posed by Google. The ad is for a "data ... privacy engineer." It says that the successful recruits will join a team of "back-end ninjas: protecting your privacy, ensuring your security and leaving no trace behind." Successful applicants will be required to "identify, research, and help resolve potential privacy risks across all of our products, services, and business processes in place ... (view more)

Google has agreed to pay a $22.5 million penalty for misleading users of the Safari browser about its privacy policies. It's the largest penalty ever imposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for this type of offense. The case involves cookies, ... the small text files which a website places on a user's computer to identify and help track them. In many cases, cookies help advertisers deliver particularly relevant advertisements (Amazon's "Recommended for You" feature is one example). Google Tricks Safari With Bogus Code Since many web users don't like being followed, Apple decided ... (view more)

Just as its shares are hitting the stock market for the very first time, Facebook has been hit with a massive $15 billion lawsuit. The suit was recently filed in California by law firm Stewarts Law US. It's a class action suit that pools a total of ... 21 different suits from across the United States, and involves the way the company, newly valued at more than $100 billion, tracks its members after they've logged out of their accounts. Federal, State Privacy Acts Allegedly Violated The $15 billion request for damages and penalties is based on provisions in the federal Wiretap Act which say that ... (view more)

Google is currently getting grilled by French officials over the way it handles customer privacy. At the same time, the search giant is also facing stern criticism from British politicians regarding the way it deals with complaints involving illegal ... websites. The French authority that governs data handling in the country, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertes, (CNIL) has even slapped the company with a deadline of April 6, by which it must answer to the Commission. The CNIL is currently leading a Europe-wide probe into Google's recent changes to its privacy policies. ... (view more)

France's National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) claims Google's new privacy policy violates European Union law. CNIL is an agency charged with protecting citizens' private information, and reporting to the European Commission. ... Last January, Google announced its new privacy plan, scheduled to take effect this Thursday, March 1, 2012. The plan claims to allow for more convenient tracking of its privacy initiatives across Gmail, Google Docs, and about 60 other online services, while clarifying those policies for its users. Critics Say Advertising, Monetization Drives ... (view more)

Update: Save up to 60%. Offer ends on January 14th. Proceeds support our website and staff of writers. You can click here to go straight to the offer . Otherwise, continue reading below. With every new edition of Microsoft Windows comes new tweaks, ... new menus, and oftentimes no one seems to know where the old features went, which makes optimizing the operating system for a particular PC very difficult. Let's take Windows 7, for example. It's vastly different than Windows XP and offers new visualization features and background tasks (services) that literally rob a PC of its processing power, ... (view more)

Google has unveiled a major overhaul of its online user tracking system, claiming to make its services more useful. However, critics fear the changes, set for March 1, 2012, will allow for more effective snooping of user data and online activities. ... The changes center around the way the company keeps track of activity data, and the way it's then used. Google Pools Online Tracking to 'Improve' Advertising, Search Under the old system, someone who receives a lot of emails about football will see advertisements for football. Someone who watches a lot of comedy clips on YouTube will see lots of ... (view more)

Facebook has been ordered by Ireland to give users greater control over their privacy settings. The order comes after a privacy practices audit that took 3 months to complete. The order will indirectly affect all Facebook accounts, except those held ... inside the US and Canada. (Source: washingtonpost.com ) Facebook Data Commissioner Issues Order The order comes from Billy Hawkes, the data protection commissioner for the Republic of Ireland. His order has such wide effect because all of Facebook's data, outside of North America, is held by a subsidiary based in Ireland and is thus subject to ... (view more)

A survey of British behavior on Facebook suggests the vast majority of pictures on the social network display intoxication, and that users are generally ignoring privacy controls. The survey, conducted by MyMemory, asked 1,781 British Facebook users ... about photographs they had posted or those in which they had been "tagged". While the sample size isn't what most scientists would consider large, the results are somewhat interesting. An astounding 76 per cent of all photos in the study showed those in the picture were drinking alcohol or had recently consumed alcoholic beverages. Scandalous ... (view more)