privacy - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Facebook moves ahead with new terms of use

  Facebook, the world's most used social-networking site, will soon move ahead with revised rules for how it operates following a row with users earlier this year.

• CDT: Privacy, transparency needed in cybersecurity policy

  U.S. President Barack Obama's administration and Congress will have to address major civil liberties and transparency concerns as they create new policies to tackle ongoing cybersecurity vulnerabilties in the government and private industry, a digital rights group said.

• Privacy rules slow adoption of electronic medical records

  In a study that is unlikely to find favor among privacy advocates, researchers from two academic institutions warned that increased privacy protections around health data will hamper the adoption of electronic medical records systems.

• Google plays down security concerns over Docs

  Google Docs users shouldn't lose sleep over the security concerns a security analyst has raised about the hosted suite of office productivity applications, Google said late Friday.

• Researchers can ID anonymous Twitterers

  Web sites that strip personally identifiable information about their users and then share that data may be compromising their users' privacy, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.

• Privacy group: Facebook principles still lacking

  Facebook's recent decision to back off proposed changes in its terms of service still leaves the social-media site with a "huge loophole" in privacy protections, a privacy group said Tuesday.

• Facebook holds the line against spammers, scammers

  Facebook is shoring up its security protection procedures as the social-networking site increasingly comes under attacks from spammers, data thieves and other tricksters, according to the company's chief privacy officer.

• Facebook puts privacy controls in hands of its users

  New Facebook setting lets users open their personal pages to public viewing

• Facebook lets members make profile elements wide open

  Facebook on Monday made it possible for members to lift privacy access controls from certain elements of their profiles, so that anyone on the social-networking site can see them.

• IBM develops Facebook privacy application

  IBM on Thursday unveiled an application that guides users toward strong privacy settings in Facebook's online marketplace and could be developed into a management tool for companies or across Web sites for users.

• Proposed US law might make Wi-Fi users help cops

  A proposed U.S. law would require Internet service providers to store information about every user of their services and keep that data for at least two years, in a bid to crack down on Internet-based predators and child pornographers.

• Are Facebook's outraged users getting a wake-up call?

  After outraged users hammered Facebook for changing its terms-of-use policy to seemingly give the company vast control over users' content, analysts are wondering if the brouhaha will serve as the long-awaited wake-up call for users to think before they post.

• Privacy group calls Google Latitude a 'danger' to security

  A privacy group is calling Google's new mapping application an "unnecessary danger" to users' security and privacy.

• Industry giants to weigh in on US privacy laws

  A group of U.S. companies, led by technology giants Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and eBay, is set to outline recommendations for new federal data-privacy legislation that could make life easier for consumers and lead to a standard federal breach-notification law.

• Mozilla wants to watch Firefox users

  Mozilla Labs, the research arm of Mozilla, wants 1% of Firefox users to allow it to watch how they use the browser -- and the Web in general.