It's 2012 and your kids have an iPhone - Do you know where they are? I do. Your address book is mine: Many iPhone apps take your data. Path got caught red-handed uploading users’ address books to its servers and had to apologize. But the relatively obscure journaling app is not alone. In fact, Path was crucified for a practice that has become an unspoken industry standard. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Foodspotting, Yelp, and Gowalla are among a smattering of iOS applications that have been sending the actual names, email addresses and/or phone numbers from your device’s internal address book to their servers, VentureBeat has learned.
Several do so without first asking permission, and Instagram and Foursquare only added permissions prompts after the Path flare-up. Some of these companies deny storing the personal data, as Path was doing, but the transmission alone makes the private data susceptible to would-be intercepters. Path steps on a privacy landmine These same relationships are the building blocks for any successful social application.
Above: Unencrypted address book data. Apple provides no protection. # Privacy Daily. The Hidden Secret To Managing Your Identity On The Internet. Update: Click here for a great infographic and helpful video added to the end of this post Google has a search engine devoted just to you. It’s true. For example, here’s mine. And Google changed how it works just a few weeks ago (on 1-12-2012). It’s based on tracking your identity on the web. So read on to make sure you’re up-to-date on how this works.
Executive Summary: If you want Google to find all you do and rank it highly, from your Google+ account, use “Edit profile>Other profiles” to add all your profiles (e.g. This special search influences ALL other search results that have anything to do with you, because of how something called “Authorship markup” began affecting web search in early June of 2011. In this post I’ll tell you how to find the search engine about you, and how to make it return the results you want by managing your Google identity. What’s Google Doing With Your Identity? Why should you care?
Special links to or from your Google profile determine your identity. IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy. Privacy. Google Uses Your LOLs to Decide Which Videos are Funnier. At the end of last year, we told you about a new project by YouTube called the “ YouTube Slam “. The project pits two videos against one another in a “hot or not” style competition. The site lets you watch two videos and decide which one is better, or in the case of comedy, funnier. That project alone wasn’t scientific or geeky enough for Google , so the company decided to delve deeper into what makes videos funnier and how the company can detect that you enjoyed it more than any other old video.
One place the company decided to go was within the comments on all of the videos that participated in the YouTube Slam. Surprisingly, the company found that the more o’s you put in your LOL comments on the video, the funnier you thought it was. Next we needed an algorithm to rank these funny videos by comedic potential, e.g. is “Charlie bit my finger” funnier than “David after dentist”?
How scientific is it exactly? Clever Burglars Using Facebook To Learn When It's Safe To Rob Your Home. Privacy. New technologies are radically advancing our freedoms, but they are also enabling unparalleled invasions of privacy. National and international laws have yet to catch up with the evolving need for privacy that comes with new digital technologies. Respect for individuals' autonomy, anonymous speech, and the right to free association must be balanced against legitimate concerns like law enforcement.
EFF fights in the courts and Congress to maintain your privacy rights in the digital world, and works with partners around the globe to support the development of privacy-protecting technologies. Your cell phone helps you keep in touch with friends and family, but it also makes it easier for the government to track your location. See More And the next time you try to board a plane, watch out—you might be turned away after being mistakenly placed on a government watch list, or be forced to open your email in the security line. As privacy needs evolve, so too should our regulatory regimes.
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