The company, which reduced the length of that storage time to seven days with the release of iOS 4.3.3, denies that the iPhone was ever logging its users’ locations. Instead it claims the device was creating a crowdsourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers. “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone,” a company spokesman told Reuters. “Apple has never done so and has no plan to ever do so.”

Groupon sent out emails to its users this weekend, about changes it has made to its privacy statement and terms of use.

Among the most notable changes is more information about the Chicago-based social buying start-up’s collection and use of mobile location information.

Said Groupon:

“In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).”

In other words, if you let them, in order to improve the experience and make the Groupon Now app more useful, you’re being tracked.

This, of course, has been a dicey issue of late, most recently related to Apple and Google smartphones and what information they collect and retain.

In addition, with a pending IPO, Groupon is under all kinds of scrutiny and any big changes will be closely studied.

In addition, in its email to customers (see below in its entirety), the company said that it had broadened the definition of personal information to include your interests and habits and also that it may share that personal information with partners in new offering areas, such as travel deals with Expedia.

Groupon said it was also trying to improve readability of its consumer information and give greater transparency to its customers.

Here is the whole Groupon memo about the changes:

Wondering about Changes to the Groupon Privacy Statement?

We want to tell you a little more about some material changes we just made to the July 22, 2010 version of the Groupon Privacy Statement (the “Old Privacy Statement”) to create the new Groupon Privacy Statement (the “Updated Privacy Statement”).

In general, all of the changes to the Updated Privacy Statement were made to improve readability, provide greater transparency about our information handling practices, address some new types of relationships Groupon is forging and new technologies Groupon is using or may use, and to let you know about the privacy choices you have. Read on.

* Groupon continues to be a proud member of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. The Updated Privacy Statement contains a reference to the most current version of the TRUSTe Program Rules and includes some additional statements required by those Program Rules. As a TRUSTe Privacy Seal holder, Groupon is committed to complying with the Program Rules as applicable to its online privacy program.

* The Updated Privacy Statement replaces the phrase “Personally Identifiable Information” with “Personal Information” to improve readability and accuracy. (More on this below.)

* The Updated Privacy Statement clarifies that Personal Information is any information that could be used to identify, locate or contact an individual. This definition is broader than the definition in the Old Privacy Statement, which limited the concept of personally identifiable information to identification information in the context of certain defined identification activities. (Whew!) The broader definition in the Updated Privacy Statement reflects our dedication to protecting privacy in all areas of our business.

* The Updated Privacy Statement includes a definition of Personal Information and explains the types of Personal Information collected, used and disclosed by Groupon, namely “Contact Information,” “Relationship Information,” “Transaction Information,” “Financial Account Information,” and “Mobile Location Information.” These definitions provide more meaningful definition about the types of information we collect and how we classify information internally.

* The Updated Privacy Statement has shortened the section that goes on about how we use and disclose non-identifiable information. This change was made to improve readability so we could focus more on talking about what we do with Personal Information.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains information on Groupon’s collection and use of Mobile Location Information. In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).

* The Updated Privacy Statement presents Groupon’s disclosures of Personal Information in a more detailed and transparent fashion. The new “When and Why Groupon Discloses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement details the circumstances when Personal Information is shared with third parties in a comprehensive, bulleted-list format. This section reinforces Groupon’s commitment to protect privacy by generally limiting disclosures of Personal Information to our affiliates and services providers and to those merchants and business partners with whom our users interact.

* The Updated Privacy Statement omits the section in the Old Privacy Statement regarding disclosures of Personal Information to Google for remarketing purposes. Groupon does not provide Personal Information to Google for remarketing.

The Old Privacy Statement’s section on “Data Tracking” has been replaced with an expanded section on “Cookies and Related Technologies” to provide greater transparency around data collection technologies. This section contains information about all of the ways that we collect information using automated technologies, including cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, browser analysis tools, and web logs. The section is designed to educate readers about the types of data collected by each technology as well as how the data is used by Groupon. The Updated Privacy Statement clarifies that if automatically-collected data is associated with Personal Information, it is protected by the Updated Privacy Statement. This section also provides information about third party advertising relationships in a more readable form and includes a new paragraph regarding our relationship with Omniture.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains an expanded section on user choice. The “Your Choices” section in the Updated Privacy Statement provides readers with information on many different types of privacy choices that they can make, along with instructions for exercising the choice. This section also consolidates information on choices that was distributed throughout the Old Privacy Statement and contains a new link to the TRUSTe preferences page.

* The Updated Privacy Statement’s section on “Security of Personal Information” has been streamlined to more-simply state our commitment to maintaining a reasonable information security program with expected administrative, technical and physical controls.

* The Old Privacy Statement’s section “Updating and Correcting Personal Information” has been replaced with a new section “Accessing and Correcting Personal Information.” This section has been revised to improve readability and clarify the processes by which users can access, update and delete their Personal Information. This section of the Updated Privacy Statement also contains a new paragraph regarding data retention. This paragraph was added for clarity and to comply with the TRUSTe Program Rules.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains a new section giving “Notice to Residents of Countries Outside of the United States of America.” This section educates international users about the fact that Groupon is based in the U.S. so Personal Information may be transferred to the U.S. for processing.

* The “Miscellaneous Privacy Issues” section in the Old Privacy Statement has been deleted and the content it contains has been included in more appropriate, descriptive sections elsewhere in the policy. Also, we omitted the section discussing children’s information because Groupon is not designed for children and the Groupon deals are not offered to individuals under the age of majority in their states of residence. See our Terms of Use.

* The Updated Privacy Statement introduces a new contact mechanism for privacy-related inquiries: privacy@groupon.com. While general customer service questions should still be directed to support@groupon.com, the new address provides a way for us to respond to questions that our users have specifically about the privacy of their Personal Information.

And here is the email sent to users, titled “Updates to Privacy Statement and Terms of Use”:

We wanted to let you know that we’ve updated both our Privacy Statement and our Terms of Use. These new terms, which affect all Groupon users, accommodate our new products and services that allow us to offer you more relevant deals.

If you don’t feel like wading through long legal documents, here’s a summary of the notable changes, in plain English:

We’ve clarified that Groupon Now! and our other mobile apps may collect geo-location data. This lets us present you offers that are close by. See Sections 1 and 5 of the Privacy Statement.

We’ve broadened the definition of “personal information” to include your interests and habits, and provided additional details about how we collect and use your information. We’ve done this so that we can better understand what types of offers you’ll find valuable. See Section 1 of the Privacy Statement.

You may know that we’ve started working with partners to offer Groupon users new deal categories — for example, travel deals with Expedia. Our new privacy statement explains that we may share your personal information with these partners if you subscribe to special communications or buy deals in these new deal categories. See Section 4 of the Privacy Statement.

We’ve updated our Terms of Use to help you understand the expiration policies for different vouchers, including Groupon NOW! vouchers. This explains, for example, that if you don’t use a Groupon NOW! voucher within 30 days we’ll refund the purchase amount. See Section 7 of the Terms of Use.

We also clarified our expectations to ensure that our customers and visitors use the services on our website in a way that keeps the experience good for everyone. For example, we’ve prohibited abusive practices like opening multiple accounts, submitting false information and other practices that we think detract from everyone’s experience with us. See Section 5 of the Terms of Use.

The iPhone app Chewsy drills down on that problem specifically, and is a bit more useful in that it shows the best dishes at all the venues in a neighborhood before you pick where to eat.

Chewsy co-founder Chaitanya Sareen cutely calls this “the last-mile problem of restaurants.”

Chewsy, which today put out a new version with social sharing features, has a view of the top-rated dishes nearby, with pictures, ratings and reviews. (This is marginally different from competitor Foodspotting, which focuses primarily on pictures of food and doesn’t really have ratings or reviews.)

The problem is, Chewsy is far less widely used than many other location-based social and reviews sites. With only 50,000 users, very few dishes are even covered. And while folks like Foursquare might not be mainstream yet, they have mindshare and deep pockets; Foursquare just announced $50 million in new funding today.

Chewsy is actually a side project, though; the co-founders have day jobs at Microsoft. And for the record, they thought the egg sandwich at my local cafe was kind of bland.

Glympse, which has an Android and iPhone service that does just that, said Wednesday that it had raised a further $7.5 million in funding. In addition to announcing that Series B round led by Menlo Ventures and Ignition Partners, the company also noted that it had passed the one million user mark.

The service allows users to share their real-time location for up to four hours with selected friends. It’s useful for, say, letting someone who is meeting you see just how late (and lost) you really are.

And if you are somewhere worth bragging about, you can even post your exact whereabouts to Facebook and Twitter.

Google said Wednesday it is adding real-time transit info to Google Maps in San Francisco and five additional cities (Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin, Italy).

“Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates,” Google said in a blog post.

In San Francisco, such information was already available on a site called Nextmuni.com, but the integration with maps can be handier than entering in one’s location and preferred route by hand.

The industry-backed Future of Privacy Forum is launching a new ApplicationPrivacy.org Web site on Thursday that will give developers tools to create their own privacy policies as well as links to other important documentation, such as the privacy-related terms that are part of the major smartphone platform agreements. The Web site is being created with financial backing from Zynga, Facebook, AT&T, Google, Intel and TrustE.

“This was an area where we thought we could do something useful,” said Future of Privacy Forum Jules Polonetsky, a former chief privacy officer for DoubleClick and AOL.

While much of the attention has been focused on the industry heavyweights, such as the OS makers like Apple and Google, or perhaps the carriers and hardware makers, Polonetsky argues that the app makers are also an important part of the equation.

“The application developers are getting the data and using it and are certainly a key part of the process, but nobody is talking to them,” Polonetsky said.

Indeed, there are all kinds of apps out there that are collecting data well beyond that needed for their application, including location-based data, access to the Internet, phone dialer and other user information. Of course, there is also legitimate concern about the actions of the bigger players in the industry, including the platform players, about how they are collecting, storing and using data gathered from mobile devices.

Two Senate subcommittees have already held hearings on the matter, with Senator Al Franken calling for Apple and Google to demand app developers put privacy policies in place.

Polonetsky said he knows some of the rules in this area have yet to be written, but said his group’s Web site at least gives people a starting point.

“Certainly all the rules don’t exist yet,” he said.

But it is not exactly a blank canvas either. Polonetsky noted that a lot of this feels like déjà vu for him, having been through a similar period more than a decade ago when concerns arose over how much data Web sites were collecting and sharing with Internet ad networks. Now, he said, the same attention is being paid to apps and mobile ad networks.

At a Senate hearing on mobile privacy issues, lawmakers grilled technology executives on their policies and how they share consumer information with other companies. The hearing comes amid recent revelations that Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones routinely collect information about the location of consumer cellphones. Apple has since limited the data it collects.

“I know you can shut off your location services but that doesn’t do the trick because we want to use them,” said Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), who recently introduced a privacy bill along with Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), which would establish consumer online privacy rights. “We still need a privacy standard. We still need basic rules of the road.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The two tech giants are due back on Capitol Hill on Thursday to appear before a different Senate subcommittee. This time, they are also slated to be joined by a Facebook representative.

The hearing, titled Consumer Privacy and Protection in the Mobile Marketplace, is slated for 10 am on Thursday before the Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance subcommittee of the Senate’s Science, Commerce and Technology committee.

Slated to appear are Google public policy director Alan Davidson, Apple government affairs VP Catherine Novelli and Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, along with representatives of the Federal Trade Commission, Common Sense Media and the Association for Competitive Technology.

It’s the latest outgrowth of a mini-furor over how mobile devices make use of location-based data. The recent interest in the issue began after attention was focused on a little-known location database stored on the iPhone as well as the fact that Google and others collect location-based data to build global databases of things like traffic and the location of Wi-Fi signals. By the time Apple noted, a week later, that it was not tracking individual users and that the data customers were seeing was a locally-stored subset of a global crowdsourced database, lawsuits had been filed and regulators were already calling for hearings.

To get more background on the issue, here’s the reader we prepared ahead of last week’s hearings.

That means smartphone giants like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. will likely have to obtain user consent before gathering the data, delete the information after a certain period of time and keep it anonymous.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Location information is emerging as one of the hottest commodities in the tracking industry–the field of companies that are building businesses based on people’s data.

Some companies are using the data to build better maps or analyze traffic patterns. Others send users advertisements for services near where they are located. Some insurers hope to use the data to provide discounts to better drivers.

On Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans a hearing to consider whether a federal law is required to protect consumer privacy on mobile devices. The hearing was spurred by the public outcry over recent findings that Apple Inc. and Google Inc. gather location-related data from iPhones and Android phones. Both companies are set to testify.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The hearings are a response to a sudden spike in concern about the issue following revelations that the iPhone was storing a great deal of location information and over just how much location information Apple and Google are collecting and for what purposes.

To help get people ready for the hearings, Mobilized has pulled together some recent and not so recent comments on the matter that help frame the issues. (Of course, All Things D will be updating things from D.C. as well. As I’ll be at Google I/O, colleague Arik Hessedahl will be monitoring the hearings; the proceedings will also be Webcast.)

Now, on to your required readings.

First off, here’s a summary of who will be speaking on Tuesday. The biggest names are Apple and Google. Apple’s representative is Bud Tribble, a VP of software technology. Though far from a household name, Tribble is notable as one of the members of the original Mac development team and worked at NeXT and Sun Microsystems, before eventually rejoining Steve Jobs at Apple. Google will be represented by Alan Davidson, a director of public policy. Also set to appear are a few policy groups and representatives of the FTC and DOJ.

So what will Apple and Google have to say for themselves?

Well, Apple’s most detailed comments on the location and privacy issue came a couple of weeks ago in a statement it released and from an interview Steve Jobs and top executives did with Mobilized. The most clear point Apple has sought to get across is that it is not, and has no intention of, tracking individual iPhones or users.

“We haven’t been tracking anybody’s location,” Jobs said in the interview. Apple also lets users turn on and off location services for each application, including Apple’s own apps and provides iPhone owners a way to see which programs have recently been using such information. Although Apple said it is not collecting personal information, it did say it used the collective location data to build a crowdsourced database of cellphone and Wi-Fi signals and that the company is building a traffic database. Jobs also declined to say if Apple was working on any other services that tap into collective data. Apple has also since updated the iPhone operating system to reduce the amount of location information stored on its devices.

Google, for its part, hasn’t had too much new to say on the matter since commenting to Mobilized on April 22.

“All location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user,” Google said in that statement. “We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices. Any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user.”

Potentially even more interesting than recent comments, however, are comments that Jobs and Google executives have made in the past. The leaders of both companies addressed the issue last year, with Jobs speaking at our D8 conference and Google’s Andy Rubin speaking at D: Dive Into Mobile. We’ve cut a special highlight reel together with both executives’ relevant comments.

As for what to watch for at the hearings on Tuesday, there are a lot of questions that have yet to be answered by Google, Apple and others in the industry. One of those is what the companies are committing to doing or not doing with people’s information, both individually and collectively. Both companies’ privacy policies give them wide latitude with how to use location-based information once a user opts to receive location-based services. The key is what limits the companies are willing to impose on themselves–and any that the assembled lawmakers may be interested in adding.

And don’t forget, Tuesday is just the start of a tech-filled week in Congress. On Wednesday, a different Senate subcommittee will take a look at AT&T’s proposed $39 billion deal to acquire T-Mobile USA.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110510/required-reading-what-to-know-ahead-of-todays-applegoogle-hearing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110506/hold-the-sports-phone-ross-levinsohn-not-leaving-yahoo-for-hbo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110506/hold-the-sports-phone-ross-levinsohn-not-leaving-yahoo-for-hbo/#comments Fri, 06 May 2011 18:45:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=43661

While there has been a report on a boxing news site that Yahoo Americas head Ross Levinsohn was leaving the Internet giant to run HBO’s sports unit, it’s not so.

Trust BoomTown on this one–I have all top Yahoo execs embedded with Apple iOS and Google Android location tracking devices.

Apparently, calling to ask about such a big move is tough one-two for BoxingScene.com, but Yahoo confirmed the non-departure and Levinsohn did too in a brief phone conversation.

“I’m not leaving,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110506/hold-the-sports-phone-ross-levinsohn-not-leaving-yahoo-for-hbo/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110506/mr-smith-getting-company-as-att-t-mobile-sprint-apple-and-google-all-head-to-washington/ http://allthingsd.com/20110506/mr-smith-getting-company-as-att-t-mobile-sprint-apple-and-google-all-head-to-washington/#comments Fri, 06 May 2011 12:00:53 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7418 There will be no shortage of tech companies speaking in Washington next week, as separate Senate subcommittees hold hearings on two major issues in the tech industry.

On Wednesday, four cellular company CEOs are set to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee at a hearing looking into AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. A day earlier, Apple and Google are set to appear before a different subcommittee to explore issues related to privacy and location-based information.

According to a witness list released on Thursday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and Cellular South CEO Victor “Hu” Meena are all scheduled to testify at Wednesday’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Also on the list are Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge and Larry Cohen, head of the Communication Workers of America.

And, if AT&T and T-Mobile needed any more hint that this would not be a friendly audience, they need look no further than the hearing’s title: “The AT&T/T-Mobile Merger: Is Humpty Dumpty Being Put Back Together Again?”

And that’s not the only big tech hearing on Capitol Hill next week. On Tuesday, representatives of Apple and Google are scheduled to appear before the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law at a hearing about location-based data practices

The hearing comes in the wake of concerns over how both companies are handling location-based information gathered on cell phones and tablets. CEO Steve Jobs told Mobilized in an interview last week that Apple would be testifying before Congress.

“They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course,” Jobs said. Apple has maintained that it isn’t tracking anyone and that location data found on the iPhone was the relevant portion of a broad, crowdsourced location database. Apple has since released an update to the iPhone operating system that limits the amount of such information stored on the device and ensured that all data is deleted when users opt not to use location-based services.

Google has also defended its handling of information, arguing that the information it collects is necessary to provide location-based services.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110506/mr-smith-getting-company-as-att-t-mobile-sprint-apple-and-google-all-head-to-washington/feed/ 0