personal information

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Playdom Settles FTC Charges Over Children's Data

Matt Jarzemsky, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on May 12, 2011 at 12:49 pm PT

Playdom Inc., an operator of online social games, has agreed to pay $3 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges it collected and disclosed children’s personal information without parents’ consent, the agency said.

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Playdom Settles FTC Charges Over Children’s Data

Matt Jarzemsky, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on May 12, 2011 at 12:49 pm PT

Playdom Inc., an operator of online social games, has agreed to pay $3 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges it collected and disclosed children’s personal information without parents’ consent, the agency said.

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Facebook Seeking Friends in Beltway

Elizabeth Williamson, Amy Schatz and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal in News on April 20, 2011 at 5:00 am PT

President Barack Obama will travel to Facebook Inc.’s Silicon Valley headquarters Wednesday to hold a “town hall” meeting on the economy with users of the social-networking site.

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Plastic Surgeon Figures in Google Face-Off in Spain

Paul Sonne, Max Colchester and David Roman, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal in News on March 7, 2011 at 12:00 am PT

In 1991, the Spanish newspaper El País published an article centered on a dispute between Madrid plastic surgeon Hugo Guidotti Russo and one of his patients over an allegedly botched breast surgery. The headline: “The Risk of Wanting to Be Slim.”

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Apple Sued Over Mobile App Privacy

Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on December 28, 2010 at 3:01 pm PT

Apple and four app developers have been hit with a lawsuit that alleges violations of computer fraud and privacy laws by allowing ad networks to access users’ personal information.

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Suit to Snuff Out "History Sniffing" Takes Aim at Tracking Web Users

Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on December 6, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

A lawsuit filed Friday for alleged use of “history sniffing,” a method for surreptitiously detecting what websites a person has visited, is the latest to take aim at technologies that harvest Internet users’ personal information.

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A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name

Emily Steel, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on October 25, 2010 at 12:00 am PT

In the weeks before the New Hampshire primary last month, Linda Twombly of Nashua says she was peppered with online ads for Republican Senate hopeful Jim Bender. It was no accident. An online tracking company called RapLeaf Inc. had correctly identified her as a conservative who is interested in Republican politics, has an interest in the Bible and contributes to political and environmental causes.

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It's Modern Trade: Web Users Get as Much as They Give

Jim Harper, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on August 9, 2010 at 12:00 am PT

If you surf the web, congratulations! You are part of the information economy. Data gleaned from your communications and transactions grease the gears of modern commerce. Not everyone is celebrating, of course. Many people are concerned and dismayed—even shocked—when they learn that “their” data are fuel for the World Wide Web.

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Hackers Aren't Only Threat to Privacy

Ben Worthen, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on June 23, 2010 at 12:00 am PT

Sophisticated hackers aren’t the only ones gaining access to sensitive data on the Internet. A large amount of personal information is being left exposed or poorly protected by companies and governments. The number of identity-theft victims in the U.S. jumped 12 percent to 11.1 million in 2009, according to research company Javelin Strategy & Research.

Facebook’s New(est) Approach to Privacy

John Paczkowski in Social on May 26, 2010 at 10:47 am PT

In a Washington Post editorial Monday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to simplify the privacy tools that have so befuddled the social networking site’s members and sparked complaints from privacy advocates and lawmakers. This morning, we found out just how he proposes to do that.