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Facebook Is Like a Credit Card and That's Why It's Here to Stay. For much of the Thanksgiving weekend, I was surrounded by friends and family who have either abandoned Facebook or who never joined it in the first place. It’s not that they haven’t heard of Facebook, or that they doubt its potential to be useful. Instead, it typically came down to a fundamental concern about sharing their personal information and a fear that it would turn into a distraction that eats away too much of their time. My girlfriend, who is active on other social networks, abandoned Facebook earlier this year largely because she felt uncomfortable with the idea of the company using her personal information for marketing purposes.

Her father, a lawyer, has held off from joining Facebook in part because he, like others in his profession, has concerns about sharing information publicly. Likewise, my parents have avoided the social network because of a general discomfort about sharing personal information online with others. Professor finds profiling in ads for personal data website. LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Dr. Latisha Smith, an expert in decompression sicknesses afflicting deep sea divers, has cleared criminal background checks throughout her medical career. Yet someone searching the Web for the Washington State physician might well come across an Internet ad suggesting she may have an arrest record. "Latisha Smith, arrested? " reads one such advertisement. Another says: "Latisha Smith Truth... Check Latisha Smith's Arrests.

" Instantcheckmate.com, which labels itself the "Internet's leading authority on background checks," placed both ads. Latanya Sweeney is a Harvard University professor of government with a doctorate in computer science. Ebony Jefferson, for example, often turns up an instantcheckmate.com ad reading: "Ebony Jefferson, arrested?

" "As an African-American, I'm used to profiling like that," said Dr. Instantcheckmate.com declined to comment. Instantcheckmate.com is one of many data brokers that use and sell data for a variety of purposes. Mobile Benefits Drive BYOD Security. The proliferation of smartphones and tablet computers has brought into sharp focus the security problems that were becoming more serious even prior to the BYOD movement. Laptops, remote workers, and portable memory sticks raised similar issues when there was a danger of company data leaving the secure corporate perimeter. BYOD security forces corporate IT departments to address these questions and develop secure solutions for mobile data. A Government Perspective Governments face security challenges similar to companies, but some departments have to deal with more sensitive information than the average business.

Data Leakage or Loss Midsize businesses, while not generally handling data as sensitive as these government departments, have similar data concerns. A key factor is separating company and personal data. Such a process also addresses data loss. Apple leads legal battle over e-commerce vs. privacy rights in California Supreme Court. Parked at the computer and want to use your credit card to buy the latest Lil Wayne song or a cool app on iTunes? Arrange the perfect date on eHarmony? Buy a ticket to a 49ers game on StubHub? Chances are those online merchants will ask for your personal information to close the deal. And they may just be violating a two-decade-old California law designed to restrict the amount of personal information consumers must provide to make a credit card purchase.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court will tackle the unprecedented question of whether that state law applies to online commerce in a legal challenge led by Apple and backed by a host of retailers ranging from Walmart to eBay. Apple argues that the law, called the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act, applies only to brick-and-mortar businesses and was last revised in 1991, when the notion of an iTunes store wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye. The Supreme Court case is the latest in a line of legal tangles over the issue. Papacharissi. In contemporary democracies, privacy is recognized as a basic human right — the ‘right to be let alone,’ as defined by the landmark Warren and Brandeis (1890) Harvard Law Review article. It is rumored that Warren was inspired to write this article following intrusive news coverage of society parties his wife had thrown.

These culminated with the press taking and publishing photographs from his daughters’ private wedding party. At the time, Warren and Brandeis saw it necessary to assert the right to privacy, or, in their words, ‘the right to an inviolate personality’ given the prevalence of media platforms that could so easily render a private event, public. In modern societies, this distance between public and private dwindles, and contemporary media further blur the lines separating private from public. Social media, in particular, enable individuals to connect with multiple audiences on online social planes that are neither conventionally public, nor entirely private. BITS - Seeking Some Privacy In a Networked Age.

Free Customers Are More Valuable than Captive Ones - Doc Searls. “Put down the customer. Step away from the marketplace.” That’s what Craig Burton once said to a clueless marketing officer at a meeting we both attended a few years back. It was one of the most right-on things I have ever heard uttered inside a company. It also comes to mind every time I hear unwanted surveillance of customers rationalized for marketing purposes, or how Big Data lets a company know a customer better than she knows herself. We hear lots of that jive lately, and it makes full sense only to business people talking to other business people. To most customers it’s creepy, regardless of how many Chief Experience Officers get hired, or how many sales pieces lauding “the Chief Executive Customer” get distributed. What’s rarely heard amidst all this talk about customer intelligence is the customer’s own voice, expressing her own agency as an independent actor in the marketplace. 1.

VRM stands for vendor relationship management. SITE: Okay. SITE: Okay. SITE: Okay, What else? Consumer Awareness of Ad Biz's Privacy Self-Reg Low, but Improving. The interactive advertising business has done a pretty good job of convincing regulators to give its self-regulation program for online behavioral advertising a chance to the point where the Federal Trade Commission publicly supported the program when it issued its privacy report in March. But it needs to do a better job when it comes to consumers. A new study from Truste, a company that provides privacy tools for companies to comply with the industry's ad choices program, found that public awareness for the icon remains low at 14 percent.

Still, the figure represents an improvement over last year's dismal 5 percent, before the industry began rolling out an education campaign and website designed by McCann Erickson. Conducted by Harris Interactive for Truste, the online and mobile privacy perceptions report suggests that the ad industry will need to keep up its privacy outreach. All the statistics add up to one thing. The ad industry has its job cut out for it. U.S. Government Requests For Google Users' Private Data Jump 37% In One Year. AllClear ID Rolls Out First-Ever Social Security Number Blocking Service For Children’s IDs. ID and fraud protection service AllClear ID, is launching a new feature today which aims to protect kids’ Social Security Numbers (SSNs) from being stolen and used to secure things like mortgages, loans and other big ticket items. It’s a major problem, the company says, noting in a new study that 10.7% of children have had their ID stolen.

The idea with the new service is to create the equivalent of the “Do Not Call” list for children’s SSNs. Once on the list, if any criminal tries to use the kid’s ID for any reason – even just a credit check – credit reporting agency TransUnion will immediately flag and block the ID’s use. Oh, and the best part? It’s free. And no, not free as in we take your credit card info and then give you a free trial then start billing you on the sly. A little background: you may not know of AllClear ID by name, as the company, originally founded in 2004, recently rebranded itself from the way less cooler sounding name “Debix.”

Why You Should Care About and Defend Your Privacy. Social Media Privacy: How Users Protect Their Data On Their Favorite Sites (INFOGRAPHIC) Some social networking sites change their extensive policies so often, it can be hard to keep up. Facebook, for example, announced a major privacy revamp last August. the social networking site reworked a bunch of its privacy settings; according to The Next Web, the social network rolled out a few tweaks to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities page on March 18. With this in mind, it seems the best way to secure your online privacy is by meticulously controlling what you're sharing, how you're sharing, and who you're sharing with -- in addition to keeping up with your favorite social media sites' privacy policies. Fortunately, it seems many people have already realized that careful curation of whatever content they post is essential to protecting online privacy.

ZoneAlarm, a consumer Internet security company owned by Check Point Software Technologies, Inc., compiled some stats about how we Internet users tend to control our privacy on social networking sites. Alessandro Acquisti-The Economics of Privacy-Resources on financial privacy,economics,anonymity. This page provides links to resources on the economics of privacy, financial privacy, and the economics of anonymity: papers, people, related conferences, and other links.

Behind a privacy intrusion there is often an economic trade-off. The reduction of the cost of storing and manipulating information has led organizations to capture increasing amounts of data about individual behavior. The hunger for customization and usability has led individuals to reveal more about themselves to other parties. New trade-offs have emerged in which privacy, economics, and technology are inextricably linked: individuals want to avoid the misuse of the information they pass along to others, but they also want to share enough information to achieve satisfactory interactions; organizations want to know more about the parties with which they interact, but they do not want to alienate them with policies deemed as intrusive. To subscribe/unsubscribe to updates, send an email to privacy_subscribe. Categories: Just How Much Is Your Privacy Worth? Most of us would shy away from making purchases in a foreign country if we didn’t know the exchange rate.

Yet, if privacy is the true currency of the Internet, as many argue, millions of us are doing that very thing every day. Meanwhile, Internet giants amend their privacy policies in ways that allow them to harvest and sell even more of our personal data. While privacy campaigners protest, users generally vote with their clicks and carry on regardless. So should we conclude the Internet generation is happy to trade its privacy for free or cheaper Web services? Not according to Nicola Jentzsch of the German Institute of Research in Berlin, and colleagues, who last week published research showing that most people prefer to protect their personal data when given a choice and that a significant proportion are willing to pay extra to do so. The researchers directed 443 students to a website offering tickets for a real movie showing, sold by two different vendors.

Is the debate over data and online privacy misguided? Consumers have long been trading their personal data in return for access to Web sites like Facebook. The tradeoff has worked well for both companies and consumers but, as the pool of data grows bigger, so have concerns over privacy. (c) 2012 Pinar Ozger. pinar@pinarozger.com Politicians and the media have been quick to tout ideas like “opt-out” or “do-not-track” but, according to companies that depend on data, these so-called solutions are misguided and could compromise future innovation. Ashlie Beringer, partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, is an attorney who has represented companies like Facebook and Flurry in class actions and regulatory investigations over privacy.

She believes there is a disconnect between the political rhetoric over privacy and what companies are actually doing with consumer data. “The conversation is misinformed and driven by a misunderstanding of the value proposition,” said Beringer, speaking at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference on Thursday. Everyone's Trying to Track What You Do on the Web: Here's How to Stop Them.

Warns Marketers That Mobile Apps May Violate Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Federal Trade Commission warned marketers of six mobile applications that provide background screening apps that they may be violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FTC warned the apps marketers that, if they have reason to believe the background reports they provide are being used for employment screening, housing, credit, or other similar purposes, they must comply with the Act. The companies that received the letters are Everify, Inc., marketer of the Police Records app, InfoPay, Inc., marketer of the Criminal Pages app, and Intelligator, Inc., marketer of Background Checks, Criminal Records Search, Investigate and Locate Anyone, and People Search and Investigator apps. According to the FTC, some of the apps include criminal record histories, which bear on an individual's character and general reputation and are precisely the type of information that is typically used in employment and tenant screening.