You might be surprised that what Ireland has to say about regulating Facebook privacy is terribly important — but it actually is. Because Facebook’s international headquarters are in Dublin, this local commission oversees Facebook’s compliance in all regions other than the U.S. and Canada.

Facebook agreed to make changes in time for a follow-up Irish Data Protection Commission audit in July 2012. As presented in a Facebook Europe blog post, they include:

• Creating additional notifications explaining photo tagging using facial recognition (which has been a particularly contentious feature in Europe)
• Reducing data retention and logging for people who are not logged into Facebook (so-called “logged-out cookies” and alleged “shadow profiles” of non-members have been another reason for recent outcry)
• Telling users more about how to control when their information is given to Facebook platform applications

As compared to Facebook’s recent settlement with the American Federal Trade Commission, the Irish audit seems to be about more up-to-date privacy issues (much of the FTC stuff dated back to 2009). The FTC settlement is also a longer-term arrangement, with Facebook agreeing to 20 years of privacy audits. And Mark Zuckerberg didn’t give Ireland a formal apology, admitting to making “a bunch of mistakes.”

(Image copyright Peter Gerken and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons license)

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Nothing is final — all that’s been decided is that the class action lawsuit can continue — but the judge did not seem friendly to Facebook’s advertising strategy.

A spokesman for Facebook said, “We are reviewing the decision and continue to believe that the case is without merit.”

Facebook’s business proposition is that ads are better when they are social, because we care about the products our friends endorse. The lawsuit is over a key type of social ad called a “Sponsored Story,” which is generated after a Facebook user clicks the “Like” button on a brand’s page and is shown to that user’s friends.

The plaintiffs in the case said that they clicked on “Like” buttons in order to “receive discounts on products, support social causes, or to see a humorous image.” They weren’t necessarily saying they endorsed a product or consented to be put in an ad.

In legal terms, Facebook allegedly violated their “right of publicity.”

(For background, using the “Like” button as an access gate may not have been the original intent of the feature, which was a replacement for users becoming a fan of a brand’s page. However, lots of brands now do it so they can do things like raise their “Like” count, maintain ongoing relationships with users, and spread Sponsored Stories. This is something Facebook presumably could crack down on.)

Facebook replied to the court that its users have consented to this kind of thing by agreeing to its Terms of Use. But Judge Lucy H. Koh agreed with the plaintiffs that Sponsored Stories didn’t exist when many of the users agreed to the Terms of Use, and Facebook didn’t ask them to review or renew when it added the opt-out feature.

(It’s possible that in the aftermath of the Facebook-FTC settlement, Facebook would have to be more careful about explaining and rolling out this kind of feature in the future.)

The plaintiffs want to be paid for their endorsements, citing public statements by Facebook execs about how effective the social ads are. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has said Sponsored Stories are twice as likely to be remembered as an ordinary ad, and three times as likely to inspire a user to buy something.

In her ruling, Koh denied 10 different ways Facebook tried to get the case dismissed. The only place Koh agreed with Facebook is that the plaintiffs can’t claim “unjust enrichment” as a cause of action — but that’s basically a technicality, because recent California case law says that’s no longer something you can claim.

FacebookFraley

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

That’s Carrier IQ’s claim, anyway.

Responding to a Washington Post report claiming that the company is the subject of an official FTC investigation, Carrier IQ said this is not the case. While it is meeting with federal regulators, the company says it is doing so proactively. It wasn’t summoned to Washington as part of a formal inquiry.

“This week CarrierIQ sought meetings with the FTC and FCC to educate the two agencies about the functionality of its software and answer any and all questions,” the company said in a statement given to AllThingsD. “Although Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-Chairman of the Bi-Partisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the practices of Carrier IQ, we are not aware of an official investigation into Carrier IQ at this time.”

In other words, there could be an official inquiry — the company just doesn’t know about it yet. And that may yet prove to be the case. The Washington Post says anonymous federal officials have confirmed the investigation, and the Post doesn’t often make such claims unless they’re bulletproof. So expect to hear more about this in the days ahead.

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• Carrier IQ Speaks: Our Software Monitors Service Messages, Ignores Other Data
• Apple: We Stopped Supporting Carrier IQ With iOS 5
• RIM, HTC, Google on Carrier IQ: Blame the Carriers
• Carrier IQ Improves My Wireless Service by Logging My Keystrokes? Please Explain.

Full Carrier IQ Coverage »

Way back in September, Facebook told the world it was launching two major changes to its service: A revision of user profiles, called Timeline, that would make them more substantive and beautiful records of people’s lives; and “Open Graph” tools for developers to automatically share activity by logged-in Facebook users to their Timelines and friends.

Facebook didn’t give a firm date for the new launches, though it indicated they would be ready soon. “We’re going to roll [Timeline] out widely over the next few weeks as we polish all the edges,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers and press attendees in his keynote at f8 on Sept. 22.

But we’re already in December, and those tools have yet to arrive. Why the delay?

“We wanted to let developers build on the platform and to give users more time to get used to the idea of change coming,” a Facebook spokeswoman told AllThingsD, noting that Facebook has been criticized in the past for rolling out products in a hurry. Would she offer a launch date, or even an estimate? Nope.

Developers told AllThingsD that they are eager and ready to launch their Open Graph tools, but that Facebook keeps pushing its dates back. In recent developer communications, Facebook’s promises to launch “before the end of the year” have segued to January, the developers said.

Developers also said they’re worried that Facebook has told them it will likely run a staged rollout, where all users might not receive access at the same time, and where users would have seven days to review their Timeline before publishing it.

Those various states of deployment could be a chafe for app makers to support simultaneously, and could potentially confuse users.

At f8 in September, Zuckerberg had promised that Facebook would soon be filled with a cornucopia of verbs — like “watch,” “listen,” “read,” “cook,” “run,” “throw sheep,” etc. — building on the more static “people,” “places,” “things” and other nouns the site had supported in the past.

He said users could look forward to automatically sharing and collecting records of their culinary and athletic adventures through social cooking and social running apps, for example. Facebook also named a list of developers who had already agreed to create Open Graph applications, including Blockbuster, Flipboard and Mashable.

But only a chosen few — including Spotify, Rdio, the Guardian, the Washington Post and Netflix (though the social version of Netflix is not available in the U.S. yet) — got to launch in September; to my knowledge, no other partners or any other developers have since been allowed to release their “frictionless sharing” apps to the masses.

Meanwhile, more than a million Facebook users are already trying Timeline through a preview version for developers.

Months later, it seems rather odd that some users have an entirely different Facebook aesthetic. Personally, as a user with many connections in the tech industry who have activated their Timelines, when I happen on an older-style profile, with no glossy cover photo, the layout feels dated.

Here are some of the reasons Facebook, developers and conspiracy theorists gave for the delays:

• From the Facebook camp, we hear of efforts to rewrite Timeline to make it faster, to sync up mobile versions, and to fully ensure the product is ready. There’s also some chatter of internal conflict over the Timeline concept.
• Based on my own observations, early response to beta versions of the new features has been mixed. The new real-time Ticker, built to show Open Graph activity and every other action taken on Facebook as a sidebar on the site’s main page, was initially unpopular with many users. Anecdotally, I’ve seen very few Timeline beta users scan in their baby photos to tell the backstory of their lives. And new automated sharing features — like Spotify and especially the social news reader apps — can be annoying.
• There are also some external factors. A small company called Timelines, with trademarks on its brand, sued Facebook right after f8. A judge denied Timelines a temporary restraining order against Facebook, but said he would reconsider if Facebook opens Timeline to a larger audience. As of Oct. 8, 1.3 million people were using the Timeline beta, and tens of thousands were signing up per day, according to court documents. Also, Facebook recently agreed to settle with the FTC over privacy complaints. While the settlement specifically prohibits Facebook from retroactively changing any user privacy settings, it’s not as explicit about how Facebook must introduce privacy features for new products. Given that Facebook is likely to go public soon, people at the company are probably especially interested in surviving a major launch with as little privacy backlash as possible.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Of the 25 posts Zuckerberg has published on Facebook’s corporate blog in the past five years — including today’s acknowledging a long-term privacy settlement with the FTC — I count 10 that were written to address complaints. (The rest are his personal celebrations of milestones and new products.)

Here’s a trip down memory lane, looking back at Zuckerberg’s apologies for upsetting users — usually about privacy.

There are some common themes. Zuckerberg almost always tells users that change is hard, often referring back to the early days of Facebook when it had barely any of the features people know and love today. He says sharing and a more open and connected world are good, and often he says he appreciates all the feedback.

Most of all, Zuckerberg seems to take pride in offering an explicit, earnest apology, but doesn’t actually admit he was wrong, just that he’s sorry for how things were rolled out or perceived.

First up, this is a real gem. On August 29, 2006, Zuckerberg made his first Facebook company blog post. It was a pre-apology, warning users of upcoming changes they might not like — I think he was referring to the news feed and opening the site to the general public.

When we’ve made changes in the past, a lot of people have gotten upset and emailed in asking us to change the site back. Change can be disorienting, but we do it because we’re sure it makes the site better.

The next week, users did in fact go bonkers over the introduction of Facebook’s news feed. Zuckerberg famously wrote, “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.”

We didn’t take away any privacy options. [Your privacy options remain the same.] The privacy rules haven’t changed. None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn’t see it before the changes.

Later, Zuckerberg dropped the condescension and admitted “we really messed this one up,” both in messaging and controls for the news feed feature.

Then a year went by without a Zuckerberg blog post. Until…

“Thoughts on Beacon.” This was the infamous feature that automatically shared users’ activities on other Web sites back on Facebook. (The concept has made a return in Facebook’s new frictionless sharing, which is to be rolled out more fully soon.) Zuckerberg wrote:

We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

After that, Facebook started experimenting with how it rolled out new products. In some cases it picks a group of users to try something first, in others it allows any user to opt in to try something new. Some products go out to every user within the course of a day. There doesn’t really seem to be a standard approach.

People kept complaining — as in the case of the 2008 redesign that made the Facebook news feed a chronological list like Twitter. This wasn’t a privacy uproar but instead an interface change many users didn’t like. Zuckerberg replied it would be difficult for Facebook to support both recent and relevant versions of the news feed (something the site later introduced, then took away, and recently brought back again, by the way).

Then, in early 2009, controversy erupted over changes to Facebook’s terms of use and who owned users’ information. The ensuing discussion merited three Zuckerberg posts.

At the end of that year Facebook made some major revisions to its privacy settings that set off widespread criticism. By this time Facebook privacy was a major mainstream media story.

Facebook eventually responded in May 2010 with a privacy setting overhaul. This time, Zuckerberg went to the Washington Post op-ed page to justify the changes in addition to his usual blog post. He wrote:

Facebook has been growing quickly. It has become a community of more than 400 million people in just a few years. It’s a challenge to keep that many people satisfied over time, so we move quickly to serve that community with new ways to connect with the social Web and each other. Sometimes we move too fast — and after listening to recent concerns, we’re responding.

“Sometimes we move too fast” seemed more of a brushoff than a real apology. “It’s a comment on the execution of a policy, not on the policy itself,” John Paczkowski wrote.

That brings us to the present day, where we have what turns out to be a textbook Zuckerberg apology acknowledging the FTC privacy settlement. This time, Zuckerberg tries to argue that Facebook has done more good than harm on privacy throughout its existence.

“I founded Facebook on the idea that people want to share and connect with people in their lives, but to do this everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times,” he starts. “Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information. That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The settlement, which is not particularly punitive and comes years after some of the incidents in question, shames Facebook for promising users that their information was kept private while it was in fact shared with advertisers and outside applications that the users or their friends installed. The decision is not yet final but has already been unanimously passed into a public comment period by the commission.

Facebook’s punishment is in line with what its competitors Twitter and Google have already agreed to: Clearer privacy policies that are audited every two years for the next 20 years.

Facebook is required to get users’ consent before it makes privacy changes and to do specific things like make content from deleted users’ profiles unavailable after 30 days. If it messes any of that up, it will be fined $16,000 per violation per day.

The settlement could mark a shift in the way Facebook releases new products, as it often require users to actively opt out of new offerings if they don’t want to be included.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a long blog post today admitting to “a bunch of mistakes” but also asserting that Facebook has been a leader on online privacy.

“Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information,” he said.

Zuckerberg said he’d also appointed two new Chief Privacy Officers — Erin Egan for policy and Michael Richter for products — to demonstrate a higher commitment to privacy going forward.

Many of the FTC’s complaints date back to changes Facebook had made over the past two years and subsequently addressed after public criticism. Zuckerberg contended that in the meantime Facebook has also proactively improved user privacy with tools like item-by-item privacy controls.

But it has also released new features and tools that have ruffled privacy feathers (and perhaps worse), like the new “frictionless” sharing, and users have discovered other issues such as cookies that, for a time, tracked people even after they logged out of Facebook.

The FTC settlement isn’t a judgment over whether Facebook broke the law. It also doesn’t contend that Facebook knew that it was providing advertisers with user data or that advertisers did anything nefarious with Facebook user data.

Here are the complaints:

• In December 2009, Facebook changed its website so certain information that users may have designated as private – such as their Friends List – was made public. They didn’t warn users that this change was coming, or get their approval in advance.
• Facebook represented that third-party apps that users’ installed would have access only to user information that they needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users’ personal data – data the apps didn’t need.
• Facebook told users they could restrict sharing of data to limited audiences – for example with “Friends Only.” In fact, selecting “Friends Only” did not prevent their information from being shared with third-party applications their friends used.
• Facebook had a “Verified Apps” program & claimed it certified the security of participating apps. It didn’t.
• Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did.
• Facebook claimed that when users deactivated or deleted their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. But Facebook allowed access to the content, even after users had deactivated or deleted their accounts.
• Facebook claimed that it complied with the U.S.- EU Safe Harbor Framework that governs data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. It didn’t.

And here are the remedies:

Specifically, under the proposed settlement, Facebook is:

• barred from making misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information;
• required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences;
• required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material no more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;
• required to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program designed to address privacy risks associated with the development and management of new and existing products and services, and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of consumers’ information; and
• required, within 180 days, and every two years after that for the next 20 years, to obtain independent, third-party audits certifying that it has a privacy program in place that meets or exceeds the requirements of the FTC order, and to ensure that the privacy of consumers’ information is protected.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The proposed settlement — which is awaiting final approval from the agency commissioners — would require Facebook to obtain “express affirmative consent” if Facebook makes “material retroactive changes,” some of the people said.

The agreement would require Facebook to submit to independent privacy audits for 20 years, the people said. Google Inc. agreed to similar audits in March, when it settled FTC charges of falsely representing how it would use personal information.

A spokeswoman for the FTC declined to comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Think about the federal government’s blocking of the $39 billion AT&T and T-Mobile merger and you might want to reread Google’s blog today, penned in reaction to the news that the Justice Department is making a second request for information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This is pretty routine,” wrote Google’s Motorola integration exec Dennis Woodside. “We’ve gotten these kind of requests before.”

Maybe Google has (and it has with other purchases) — but in actuality, only four percent of transactions got such a follow-up request from regulators.

To be fair, it is much more common in high-profile, big-money deals like this one, but it means a longer closing period and more uncertainty around the Android mobile ecosystem until it’s done.

Still, Google has good reason to be patient. Despite tough criticism and brutal lobbying, it won approval from Justice for its $700 million deal to buy flight data service ITA Software in April, after nine months of scrutiny and a number of conditions imposed.

And the search giant waited out an intense six-month Federal Trade Commission approval process last year for its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob. It had an even harder time with the FTC’s nod of its 2007 DoubleClick purchase for $3.1 billion.

One that it lost — an obvious bridge too far that I dubbed Yahoogle — was Google’s 2008 effort to meld a troubling partnership with Yahoo in search advertising.

So, we’ll see soon enough which way D.C. — which just had Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt up to the Senate for an antitrust hearing chit-chat — will go.

Until then, here’s Woodside’s whole blog:

An update on our Motorola acquisition

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM ET

Posted by Dennis Woodside, SVP Google

Since we announced our plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, we’ve been excited about the positive reaction to the proposed deal — particularly from our partners who have told us that they’re enthusiastic about our defense of the Android ecosystem.

And as David Drummond said when we announced our plans in August, we’re confident that this deal will be approved. We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners.

That said, we know that close scrutiny is part of the process and we’ve been talking to the U.S. Department of Justice over the past few weeks. Today we received what is called a “second request,” which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal. (This is pretty routine; we’ve gotten these kind of requests before.)

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

The FTC is proposing changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that include requiring parental consent for websites to collect a broader range of information about children under age 13, including location. They also would require parental permission for a website to use tracking software, known as cookies, to build a profile about a child and monitor children’s online activities for purposes such as targeting ads.

The move marks a major action by federal regulators to bolster privacy protections for Internet users.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

To say that Google is going to face some opposition to its proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility is what you might call a bit of an understatement.

First of all, the deal will give a lot of fresh meat to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is already investigating several aspects of Google’s business, including its Android mobile operating system business. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, investigators from the FTC and from the offices of several state attorneys general have been exploring whether or not Google prevents phone manufacturers who become Android partners from using the smartphone operating systems of other companies.

If such were the case, the party most likely to suffer would be Microsoft, whose Windows Mobile operating system is, like Android, widely offered to smartphone manufacturers. The other one that comes to mind is Hewlett-Packard, which is in talks with several companies about licensing its webOS software, which came from Palm, the handheld-making company it acquired last year.

The FTC’s investigation, said to have begun in June, is still in its early stages and may not result in a lawsuit. But you can bet that this proposed acquisition will only quicken the FTC’s pace.

The offices of several state attorneys general will also want to weigh in. The AGs in New York, California, Ohio and Texas have all ramped up inquiries into Google’s dominance of the search business.

Also in the mix is the European Commission. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Google faces no fewer than nine separate antitrust complaints in Europe. Most of those complaints have to do with Google’s search business, but at least one of them came from Microsoft, which complained in March that Google blocks competition in the Web search business.

Google is clearly sharpening its arguments for the coming fight. In the company’s official blog post announcing the deal, CEO Larry Page said Google will continue to work with other hardware companies on Android. The company says it works with 39 different manufacturers that build Android devices. But he also renewed a recent Google complaint that other companies are banding together to hurt Android by accumulating a pool of patents owned by Novell. That complaint touched off a war of words between Google and Microsoft.

In the blog post, Page insists that owning Motorola will not only give Android a kick, but will “enhance competition” and offer consumers “greater choice.” It will, of course, be interesting to see how that argument shapes up. The biggest question will focus on whether or not a Google-owned Motorola will get preferential access to new versions of Android before other manufacturers. Whatever happens, it’s going to take Google some time to get this deal done, and if it does get approved, you can expect some significant regulatory concessions.

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• Google: We’re Spending $12.5 Billion on Motorola to ‘Protect’ Android
• Motoogle: BOOM! The Mobile Business Just Got Completely Blown Up
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• Watch Google Android Kingpin — and Motorola Acquirer — Andy Rubin Unplugged (Video)
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The company confirmed in a regulatory filing that it has indeed received a subpoena from the Federal Trade Commission. In a blog post, Google laid out how it sees things.

“At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first,” the company said in the post, written by Amit Singhal, one of the key creators of Google’s search business. “We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible — and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away.”

Singhal notes that Google is aware that its success would lead to greater scrutiny, but argues that everything it has done has been for the benefit of users, rather than to reduce competition. Singhal promises the company will aid in the inquiry.

“It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand,” he said. “Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow.”

It’s worth a read, as I suspect this is a topic we are going to be hearing a ton about in the coming months.

Here’s the full blog post:

At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible — and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services.

It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand. Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow. No matter what you’re looking for — buying a movie ticket, finding the best burger nearby, or watching a royal wedding — we want to get you the information you want as quickly as possible. Sometimes the best result is a link to another website. Other times it’s a news article, sports score, stock quote, a video or a map.

Instant answers. New sources of knowledge. Powerful tools — all for free. In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers.

Search helps you go anywhere and discover anything, on an open Internet. Using Google is a choice — and there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information: other general-interest search engines, specialized search engines, direct navigation to websites, mobile applications, social networks, and more.

Because of the many choices available to you, we work constantly on making search better, and will continue to follow the principles that have guided us from the beginning:

• Do what’s best for the user. We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results.

• Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. Today, when you type “weather in Chicago” or “how many feet in a mile” into our search box, you get the answers directly — often before you hit “enter.” And we’re always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you.
• Label advertisements clearly. Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn’t.
• Be transparent. We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We’ve recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules.
• Loyalty, not lock-in. We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we’re innovating and making our products better — not because you’re locked in.

These are the principles that guide us, and we know they’ll stand up to scrutiny. We’re committed to giving you choices, ensuring that businesses can grow and create jobs, and, ultimately, fostering an Internet that benefits us all.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

We got a reminder of that today, when Google settled Federal Trade Commission privacy violation charges in connection with the service, which tried to build a social network out of users’ Gmail contacts. The problem — lots of people have no interest in making their e-mail social.

The settlement doesn’t seem to involve much more than a statement of public contrition on Google’s part, and a promise not screw up again, backed up by a commitment to two decades of privacy audits.

Still, it’s something — or, if you ask the FTC, a lot: “This is a tough settlement that ensures that Google will honor its commitments to consumers and build strong privacy protections into all of its operations,” says FTC chair Jon Leibowitz.

Google’s apology, meanwhile, is bit more muted. “We don’t always get everything right,” the search giant announced on its blog. “The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control—letting our users and Google down…We’d like to apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz. While today’s announcement thankfully put this incident behind us, we are 100 percent focused on ensuring that our new privacy procedures effectively protect the interests of all our users going forward.”

Lawrence E. Strickling, an assistant secretary of commerce, is expected to call for the legislation at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, said a person familiar with the matter.

This person said the administration will back a law that follows the outlines of a report issued by the Commerce Department in December. The administration wants any new rules to be enforceable and will look to expand the Federal Trade Commission’s authority, this person said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Microsoft’s decision to include the tool in Internet Explorer 9 means Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are the only big providers of browsers that haven’t yet declared their support for a do-no-track system in their products. In January, Mozilla Corp. said it would include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox browser. Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser.

The moves by Microsoft and Mozilla reflect an unusually fast adoption of an idea—the do-not-track system—that was first officially proposed by the Federal Trade Commission only three months ago. It highlights the pressure the industry faces to provide people with a way to control how they are tracked and targeted online, as lawmakers and regulators threaten to rein in the practice.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The bill is the first in this session to specifically tackle the creation of a do-not-track system, according to a spokesman for Ms. Speier. In December, the FTC issued a report recommending the creation of a do-not-track system and suggested that lawmakers use the report as a template for legislation.

Since the FTCs recommendation, Mozilla Corp. has said it will include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox Web browser. But so far, no tracking companies have publicly stated that they will participate in a do-not-track system.

In its newest Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft will allow users to stop certain websites and tracking companies from monitoring them. And Google last month began offering a tool that lets users of its Chrome browser permanently opt out of ad-tracking cookies.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“Verifying Google’s data snare is crucial to assessing a penalty and assuring no repeat. Consumers and businesses expect and deserve a full explanation, as well as measures shielding them from future spying. We will scrupulously safeguard the confidentiality of information we review.

“We will fight to compel Google to come clean–granting my office access to improperly collected materials and protecting confidentiality, as the company has done in Canada and elsewhere.”

– Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal Dec. 10, 2010

Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen has reassessed the need to review the consumer data inadvertently harvested by Google’s Street View cars and determined that it’s not quite as crucial as his predecessor claimed.

Jepsen said Friday that his office will enter into settlement negotiations with the company without reviewing the pilfered data, which Google has steadfastly refused to share with it. Under the terms of the deal between the two, Connecticut will drop the civil investigative demand it was using to force Google to produce the data at issue here, and Google will stipulate to collecting and storing it. It will also stipulate that the data collected included confidential and private information like “partial or complete e-mail communications.”

“This is a good result for the people of Connecticut,” Jepsen said in a statement. “The stipulation means we can proceed to negotiate a settlement of the critical privacy issues implicated here without the need for a protracted and costly fight in the courts, although we are ready to do so if we are unable to come to a satisfactory agreement through negotiation.”

PREVIOUSLY

• Well, Hell, If I Knew All I Had to Do Was Seize the Hard Drives…
• Look, Sergey, a Christmas Card From the Connecticut AG! Wait…
• Google Street View Privacy Debacle Far From Over
• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

The move is a response to a call by the Federal Trade Commission for a “do not track” mechanism to let users decide not to allow advertising cookies to track their online movements for the purposes of personalizing the ads they see on the Web.

The Keep My Opt-Outs add-on installs easily enough in Chrome, though a few people who have installed it are complaining of problems with the Chrome browser in comments on the add-on’s Web site.

Given Chrome’s relatively small share of the browser market, on its face this is a marginal move. Google however says there will be more to come. It wants to make its add-on available for other browsers and will share the code with the rest of the world on an open-source basis.

The announcement makes Firefox the first Web browser to heed the Federal Trade Commission’s call for the development of a do-not-track system. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Mozilla was exploring the development of such a system.

For Firefox’s tool to work, however, tracking companies would need to agree to not monitor users who enable the do-not-track feature. So far, no companies have publicly agreed to participate in the system, but Mozilla urged them to join in.

“Mozilla recognizes the chicken and egg problem,” the company’s newly appointed global privacy and public-policy leader, Alexander Fowler, wrote in a blog post. But, he wrote, Mozilla is asking that websites and advertisers join its efforts to “honor people’s privacy choices.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is still the world’s most popular, but its dominance is being steadily eroded by competition from Mozilla, Google and Apple. Can a new, aggressive approach to privacy change that? Can Microsoft really protect users from tracking across the Web–and do users really care?

Dean Hachamovitch, who oversees IE for Microsoft as a corporate VP, gives Walt Mossberg an update on the browser wars.

Greetings! We’ll be starting shortly. If you were in the room right now with our select crowd, you would have just heard some Aerosmith. And now, one of my favorite Van Morrison songs : “Jackie Wilson Said.” Also, we’re not using the classic red D interview chairs for this one. Going with a kind of teal blue. Now you know!

Some Isley Brothers now.

Some Elvis Costello. Don’t know this one, though.

And…here’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Kara is wearing something that might have been bedazzled. Walt’s wearing Waltwear.

An update on the state of the ATD empire, which is getting much bigger.

Walt brings on Dean Hachamovitch.

Dean, by the way, is wearing a black long-sleeve shirt that says “private” in big white letters. Hope someone asks him about it.

Ah, and Dean has a “private” shirt for Walt, too. We’ll get to privacy in a bit, it seems.

DEAN: Working on IE 9, in beta, downloaded over 20 million times. Most important is its performance. It’s amazingly fast. Also, it blurs the boundary between Web sites and apps. And also, some talk about privacy.

WALT: Okay, that was a nice ad. But please talk about reports that you’ve been eclipsed in Europe by Firefox.

DEAN: Yes, we used to have 90 percent market share back in the ’90s. But now we look at how many people choose to use our most recent versions. “We are delighted that IE 6 market share is going down. We are delighted that IE 7 market share is going down.”

DEAN: And bear in mind how much the Internet is growing. “There are a lot of different factors. It’s a very complex situation.”

WALT: Okay, on to privacy. Safari used to have some kind of privacy feature, but that’s old. Then in IE 8, you introduced a new feature, not by default, which tried to extend that protection to other sites on the Web you traveled to.

DEAN: You were describing “over the shoulder privacy.” But we’re also concerned about tracking. There are two kinds of tracking: “Expected tracking” and “creepy stalking.”

Pandora and Amazon are expected tracking. You want them to know what you’re doing. But the important thing is that you have visibility and control, and you get benefits.

For instance, when I go to Amazon, they know that I bought Spice Girls and Fergie, and they tell me other stuff I should get.

WALT: Some of that tracking isn’t sophisticated enough.

DEAN: Anyway, creepy stalking is bad. Because consumers aren’t aware of what’s going on, and they don’t have control of it.

WALT: We don’t allow slides at our conferences usually, but we’re going to make an exception. Please show us some slides!

Dean is showing people a monitor that shows you what cookies were attached to a certain NPR page, which includes tracking info that comes from Facebook integration.

Now a Fox News page with similar info.

A reminder that cookies, by the way, aren’t the only tracking info involved here. Also pixels, etc.

But even once you root around and look at the pixels and tracking info, you might not really understand what you’re looking at or who is behind them.

WALT: Microsoft is a big Internet advertiser and publisher. Don’t you do some of this stuff?

DEAN: Yes, and in addition to us and Google, etc, there is an amazing ecosystem of information brokers. There’s a huge industry around this.

WALT: So what’s coming?

DEAN: With the new rev of IE 9, first quarter of 2011, you’ll be able to “go to a Web page, click on a button and you’ll be protected from tracking.” Any Web page can do this.

It will block content on that page. It will be an open publishing platform.

WALT: Why would a publisher want to do this? They have a legitmate need to want to know things about you, to serve you better ads, right?

DEAN: We have a lot of interest from a lot of different organizations that want to make lists. Publishers, government agencies, consumer advocacy, etc.

WALT: So, I have to download a list from someone I trust to make this work. Will you maintain this list?

DEAN: No. People will find these lists the same way that they find other things on the Web they like. From Facebook, or friends, or wherever.

We think it’s important to have people exercise judgment in making these lists. The most important thing is that you go off to the Web and find one you have confidence in.

WALT: But why do I have to hope that I go to sites that have these buttons?

WALT and DEAN are trying to explain how the list and button combination will work. Frankly, I’m confused. We’ll have to circle back to this.

WALT: A cynical journalist might suggest that you’re embracing privacy and wearing a shirt because Firefox et al are eating your lunch.

DEAN: Paying Windows customers want a great experience that includes privacy, including through their browser. But another way to view people who use browsers is that they’re objects to be boxed and sold. We don’t believe that. We believe Windows customers should have a great experience with their browser.

WALT: As opposed to?

DEAN: Well, Chrome, for instance, is funded by advertising.

WALT: So is The Wall Street Journal.

DEAN: I think advertising is great. But be careful about connecting advertising with tracking. We have advertising customers, and we want them to be delighted. And we have Windows customers, and we want them to be delighted. We have a unique position on this that gives us an opporunity to lead.

WALT: All the other browsers have a privacy mode.

DEAN: But that’s for “over the shoulder” privacy, not tracking.

WALT: Some of this tracking stuff is very hard to block. Can you really protect a user from all of it?

DEAN: Good question. Flash, for instance, enables tracking “Flash cookies” and they’re inherent in Flash. Only way to turn them off is to turn Flash off.

WALT: So this won’t block Flash cookies?

DEAN: It will if you tell it to.

WALT: But that’s pretty extreme.

DEAN: Yes. We’re touching on the ambiguity to the consumer about what actually is important and worthwhile tracking, and what isn’t.

We want to help consumers make progress being in control, but it’s a work in progress. It’s happening in Berkeley and in Brussels.

WALT: Let’s switch gears. Some people, not mainstream people, are debating whether the future of entertainment and progress and productivity will be on the browser and in the cloud. Google is pushing that via Chrome OS, and they also have Android apps that store local cloud on the device. Where do you come down on that?

DEAN: It’s a great case of “and”–you’ll have local apps and cloud versions. Like with Office mail, etc. We’re doing work on speed and safety so you can feel more comfortable in the cloud. “I think it’s the best of both worlds.”

WALT: So not a religious issue? Just practicality?

DEAN: Yes.

Questions and Answers

Q: What do you think of what the FTC says about privacy?

DEAN: The paper they put out in December is a good framework. And they’ve responded positively to what we’ve put out. They’re in favor of self-regulation, and we’re eager to work with them. I’ve had conversations with them, and what they say makes sense.

WALT: You’ve been talking to competitors about working together on this?

DEAN: We’ve been talking across the industry.

Q: Who is supposed to make banking, etc., more secure? This isn’t just about someone saying something on Facebook, but opening up the wrong window and having your bank account drained.

DEAN: We take it very seriously. “Security is an industry issue. I have to say it that way, because anything that we can talk about here has multiple parties involved.” if your Facebook is hacked, was it using your banking password?

Q: I’m talking about a national security issue.

DEAN: There’s a lot of working going on within the industry, working with law enformecement, to make things more secure.

WALT: But since you have the biggest market share, there’s a lot of responsibility on you. What do you do about that?

DEAN: Well, one thing we do is put out updates every eight weeks, because things change.

But really, “the best thing you can do to remain secure is to keep all your bits updated….That would make such a difference.”

Q: Firefox has plug-ins like AdBlock, that let you block ads. They seem to be effective at blocking things like beacons, too. Are they effective and can you do something analogous?

DEAN: Add-ins require installation, etc. You need a list, too. But we’re building that functionality into IE, so you don’t need to download anything else. We’re also working with people who make lists for AdBlock Plus, and they’re eager to work with IE 9 as well.

WALT: But AdBlock blocks ads, too. You’re not going to do that, right?

DEAN: It comes down to the list. If a list author lists sites that involve ads, then they’ll go away, too.

WALT: So you could surf the Web without seeing ads?

DEAN: It depends on the list.

WALT: I do think ads are good, by the way. [Me too!]

DEAN: Right. “Ads are great!”

But this is one of the reasons the ad industry wants to create lists for this. So they can distinguish tracking from nontracking.

Q: You’ve been talking about desktop browsers. Will these features come to mobile as well?

DEAN: “We’ll be talking about our mobile browser very soon, and I’ll just smile, and you can infer from that.”

Q: How much more value does tracking really add to advertising?

DEAN: Hard for me to answer that. Maybe the next time you have one of these things, you could have someone from the ad industry.

WALT: Good idea.

And we’re done.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-microsoft-browser-boss-dean-hachamovitch-at-dces/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110106/well-hell-if-i-knew-all-i-had-to-do-was-seize-the-hard-drives/ http://allthingsd.com/20110106/well-hell-if-i-knew-all-i-had-to-do-was-seize-the-hard-drives/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:08:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=55248 Connecticut Attorney General Senator Richard Blumenthal must be beside himself. South Korea has managed to do what he so far has not: Analyze the consumer data harvested by Google’s Street View cars. And the results of that analysis do not bode well for the company’s relationship with the country.

According to South Korea’s Cyber Terror Response Center, the hard drives it seized from Google’s Seoul office last August contained a smorgasbord of consumer data. “We unlocked 79 computer hard disks seized from Google Korea last summer and discovered e-mails, instant messages and other private data sent over Wi-Fi networks,” Response Center official Jung Suk-hwa told the Korea Times. “We are now working on an additional 145 hard drives, which were handed over to us later. These disks had previously been taken out of the country.”

But whether those drives hold similar information or not, it’s already clear that Google violated South Korea’s law protecting telecommunications privacy. That said, it’s not immediately clear if the company will face a penalty for that. “We are looking to penalize whoever ordered and developed the program, but are unsure as of yet who that might be,” a police official told the Korea Herald. “Even after we confirm the identity of the suspect, we believe it will most likely be a U.S. citizen, and it is unclear whether the Korean Police Agency can prosecute those involved.”

An interesting remark, since Google has so far refused to identify the “rogue engineer” responsible for this whole Wi-Spy debacle. Perhaps if South Korea is able to do this, he or she can clarify things and confirm the veracity of Google’s explanation.

Google, for its part, trotted out yet another version of the same apologetic statement it’s issued in the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Britain….

“We are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks. As soon as we realised what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities. We have been co-operating with the Korean Communications Commission and the police, and will continue to do so. Our ultimate objective remains to delete the data consistent with our legal obligations and in consultation with the appropriate authorities.”

PREVIOUSLY

• Look, Sergey, a Christmas Card From the Connecticut AG! Wait…
• Google Street View Privacy Debacle Far From Over
• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110106/well-hell-if-i-knew-all-i-had-to-do-was-seize-the-hard-drives/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20101210/look-sergey-a-christmas-card-from-the-connecticut-ag-wait/ http://allthingsd.com/20101210/look-sergey-a-christmas-card-from-the-connecticut-ag-wait/#comments Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:37:28 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=54184 Google’s amends for inadvertently harvesting consumer data with its Street View cars may have been good enough for the Federal Trade Commission, but not for Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal. Working with the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection, his office has issued a civil investigative demand, hoping to force the company to turn over the personal data it collected and to which it has so far refused him access.

“We need to verify what confidential information the company surreptitiously and wrongfully collected and stored,” Blumenthal said in a statement, adding that doing so is “crucial to assessing a penalty and assuring no repeat.”

Though Google has already shared some of the data with other regulatory authorities, it evidently sees little need for such verification and clearly has no intention of handing any data over to Blumenthal’s office.

“As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks,” the company said in a statement rehashing the endless string of similar statements that preceded it. “As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all WiFi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities. We did not want and have never used the payload data in any of our products and services. We want to delete this data as soon as possible and will continue to work with the authorities to determine the best way forward, as well as to answer their further questions and concerns.”

Google has until Dec. 17 to give Blumenthal’s office access to the data. Or else…

PREVIOUSLY

• Google Street View Privacy Debacle Far From Over
• FTC Closes Google Street View Probe
• Google CEO Apologizes for Street View Schmidtstorm
• Google CEO’s Advice to the Street-View Shy: The Video
• Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move.
• Mr. Schmidt, There’s an Inspector Lestrade on Line One
• State AGs to Probe Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion” of Wi-Fi Data
• No Harm, Big Foul: Google Intercepted Passwords and Email Extracts
• Germany Questions Google’s Data “Mistake”
• Google Street View Cars Collected Wi-Fi User Data for Three Years

[Image credit: Someecards]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101210/look-sergey-a-christmas-card-from-the-connecticut-ag-wait/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101202/proposed-law-would-prohibit-web-collection-of-data-on-kids/ http://allthingsd.com/20101202/proposed-law-would-prohibit-web-collection-of-data-on-kids/#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:34:25 +0000 Steve Stecklow http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33399 Legislation set to be introduced early next year would prohibit companies from tracking children on the Internet without parental consent.
Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat, plans to propose legislation that, if passed, would go well beyond current federal law that requires websites aimed at children under 13 to obtain parental permission before collecting personal information such as kids’ names or email addresses.

“For many kids today, the Internet is like online oxygen,” says Rep. Markey. “To ensure that kids are protected, I plan to introduce legislation next year that will include a ‘Do Not Track’ requirement so that kids do not have their online behavior tracked or their personal information collected or profiled. I look forward to working with my colleagues to move this legislation forward.”

The plan by Mr. Markey is part of a swirl of recent activity on the Internet privacy front. He is expected to discuss his proposal at a House hearing Thursday on the feasibility of establishing a simple way for consumers to prevent data companies from monitoring their online activities. On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission called for the development of a do-not-track system.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101202/proposed-law-would-prohibit-web-collection-of-data-on-kids/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101201/ftc-backs-do-not-track-system-for-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20101201/ftc-backs-do-not-track-system-for-web/#comments Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:40:24 +0000 Julia Angwin and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33333 The Federal Trade Commission unveiled a report on Internet privacy Wednesday that calls for the development of a do-not-track system that would enable people to avoid having their actions monitored online, a move the online-advertising industry has opposed.

“Industry must do better,” the FTC staff report states. “Many companies–both online and offline–do not adequately address consumer privacy interests.”

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in a speech Wednesday at the National Press Club that it is too hard for people to avoid being tracked online, particularly as tracking companies are constantly developing new methods.

“We will not tolerate a technological arms race that aims to subvert consumer choice,” Mr. Vladeck said. “We have to simplify consumer choice, and a do-not-track option can achieve that goal.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

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