privacy protection

European Union plans to adopt a new legislation that obligates social networking websites like Facebook and search engines like Google to keep users’ privacy and in case they fail to obey the rules these companies would face court action, European Union justice chief Viviane Reding said on Wednesday.

Internet users will soon be able to stop certain websites from collecting their personal information as Microsoft is planning to launch a new feature for its latest web browser in a move to please both the federal online privacy legislation and its advertisers.

The new opt-in feature dubbed “tracking protection” builds on technology developed for Microsoft's current browser. It was downplayed as the world's largest software company tried to balance consumers' demands for privacy with advertisers' desire to gather data about users.

The story of Emily Steel in the Wall Street Journal points to an ever sore subject – online privacy protection with Rapleaf being presented as one of the largest offenders who use sensitive users’ information for its mercenary purposes. The main idea of the story is that Internet data mining firms know more than you think: your political affiliations, religious activities, income level, various likes and interests, and your activity on online dating sites, to name but a few.

Facebook continues infuriating its members with unfixed privacy issues that lets anyone browsing users’ profiles access the whole profiles even if they are set to be unseen for others. It is more than in breach of the social network’s statement "The settings you choose control which people and applications can see your information."

Consumer Watchdog has created a parody video which depicts Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a kind of evil ice cream man. The video is a commentary on what the group perceives to be Google's lack of regard for consumer privacy. In particular, the video was meant to accentuate an infamous quote from Schmidt in which he said that if you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court writes on the organization's InsideGoogle blog:

The Article 29 Working Party, European privacy committee made up of the data protection regulators from the EU's 27 member states, has released its interpretation of the last year changed EU's Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive as advertisers in EU countries say that websites can comply with the law while still relying on a user's cookie settings.

In light of ubiquitous privacy violations practiced by social media websites like Facebook many venture capitalists are seeking to invest into start-ups that deal with the privacy protection and certification of the web resources that meet high standards in this area. Thus, tech companies are starting to capitalize on a potentially profitable market – privacy protection. According to the Wall Street Journal many investors are financing new companies that want to work with preventing the personal information from unauthorized access and improper use.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has started the company targeting to defend social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, from kids pornography

Cuomo has thus created a database aimed at keeping child pornography off of social networking platform. The database holds digital signatures of more than 8,000 child pornography images.

As revealed by the latest study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project the perception that young people are more likely to give away their personal data online and disregard their privacy is wrong.

The survey that polled 2,253 Americans found that young people aged between 18 and 29 are more often than adults taking measures to protect their personal information from unauthorized access. The research further shows that 44% of young adults make efforts to secure their data as compared to 33% of users aged 30 to 49 and 25% of those aged between 50 and 64.

A class action lawsuit was launched against Google over its recently introduced Buzz social networking tool. The filing was submitted by a resident of Sarasota County, Fla., with a San Jose, Calif., federal court on behalf of herself and the approximately 31 million U.S. users of Google's popular Gmail e-mail service.

In the lawsuit the plaintiff alleges that Google acts in breach of the federal privacy and computer fraud legislation by adding Buzz to Gmail service.

Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit launched by a group of its users over the recent amendments introduced by the social networking site into its privacy policy.

The filing submitted with the US District Court for the Northern District of California states that the changes in fact reduced privacy protections instead of increasing them for Facebook users.

Users who want to keep their privacy online without having their personal information provided to websites and to the authorities now can use services of the search engine company Startpage. The company launched a service allowing users concerned about privacy to carry out Web searches and click on linked pages without being identified, tracked or recorded.

 On Tuesday this week Indiana University doctoral student and privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian published an audio recording of Paul Taylor, manager of Sprint Nextel's electronic surveillance team, speaking at a law enforcement industry conference on surveillance in Washington, D.C. on October 13, 2009.