Peter A Clarke

Wired reports that Google has paid $22.5million to the FTC in a fine over violation of a privacy consent decree.

The article provides:

Google has reportedly agreed to pay a record $22.5 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission to settle charges that it violated a privacy consent decree it signed with the agency, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Google, which signed a 20-year privacy agreement with the FTC following the ill-fated Google Buzz, was investigated for using a sneaky, but well-known, tactic to bypass the strong default cookie settings on Apple’s Safari browser. Google defended the practice, saying it was simply trying to put a +1 button on Google Ads that could be used by signed-in Google users.

The proposed fine – one of the largest ever levied by the FTC – won’t hurt Google’s bottom line – at least not in the short term – but it’s a major PR loss for the search giant, which is battling with regulators in the States and in Europe over its privacy practices and accusations that it abuses its near-monopoly on search.

As privacy violations go, the Safari cookie workaround was rather minor, but little missteps by Google give authorities a way to publicly punish the company and try to force the company to be much more deliberate about privacy. Facebook Read the rest of this entry »

Telstra and privacy breaches goes together like Ginger and Fred and Bacon and Eggs.

The Australian ran a story, Telstra rings up a new privacy bungle about the privacy breach which while the Age in ‘Customer privacy is not negotiable’: Telstra boss admits leaking customer data shows that the problem is not a fleeting and passing issue.  There may be a cultural problem.

The article provides:

Telstra CEO David Thodey Read the rest of this entry »

In Is Privacy Worth the Loss of Opportunity? the author pithily sets out the dilema of applying for a position when connected to social media, listed on Google and searchable through other on line fora, such as Twitter.  Matters relevant to a job application are not on your average Facebook page.  A private life does not have any real relevance to one’s performance at work.  There are the occasional exceptions, some security agency positions.

The article provides:

As information security Read the rest of this entry »