iPhone records location data – even when you tell it not to
An article appearing in the Wall Street Journal this morning says that an iPhone user’s location data – their coordinates and some timestamps – is automatically collected by the phones, regardless of whether the location-sharing feature on the phone is turned on or off. The revelation comes after two developers released an iPhone app that […]
Online network education for kids – Doctorow style
Cory Doctorow talks about kids, privacy and social networks In a recent TEDx presentation, the Canadian blogger and science fiction author, Cory Doctorow, proposes a new type of “network education” for kids online. His views stand in contrast to those suggesting that filtering internet content in an effort to keep kids safe is the way […]
The Best Social Media Statistics for 2011
Over at Ragan’s PR daily, Adam Vincenzini has released an interesting collection of social media statistics for this year. Among my favorites: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. Moreover, social media users are even more likely to be active: 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter […]
Word of Mouse
This blog is just a quick shout out to the unheralded good social media and social networks have brought to the consumer world. While privacy advocates bemoan access to anonymous personal information for advertisement profiling, network users have struck back en masse at ‘the man’ with a bit of profiling of their own. By using […]
Students Punished for Posts
Facebook’s 500 million users are slowly becoming aware that the web is not private space. The BBC recently reported that 16 high school students in India were each given three month suspensions for making ‘rude’ statements about a female teacher through the comment section on their profiles. Examples like this are more common than people […]
Can’t block Zuckerberg
Creating the most successful social networking site of all time has its perks – the ability to view any users’ photos or personal information. In the fracas over Facebook’s recent privacy woes, its has been reported by Tech Crunch that the only person users cannot block on Facebook is the creator. Like Myspace’s infamous ‘Tom,’ […]
Facecreeping by employers soon to be illegal in Germany
The New York Times has reported that German lawmakers are about to make it illegal for employers to research job candidates using social networking sites. The move would add Facebook screening to an increasing list of ‘no-goes’ when it comes to unauthorized pre-employee screening. The move has been celebrated by Internet watch-dog sites, though the […]
Street View accused of collecting private data
Google has been up in arms in recent months over unscrupulous monitoring and hacking of its search engine by the Mainland Chinese government. Today, however, Google finds itself at the other end of the finger pointing, accused by Internet watchdogs of infringing on privacy. The saga gas been going on for weeks, and today the […]
Facebook Privacy in one click
The new one button, one page, one click, approach to Facebook privacy has arrived. [linebreak] Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be simplifying its revamped privacy settings so that users no longer have to wade through the nearly 200 individualized options in order to secure the information they post is not distributed without their […]
Privacy! Privacy! Privacy! Who Cares?
In the past few months Internet users have been bombarded with stories about government espionage and privacy loopholes on the most popular social networking sites and search engines. While we can be assured that our on-line banking purchases and credit cards are safe (unless you get phished), the information about what we buy, where we […]
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