Nothing new here – The number of cookies dropped by websites is growing.
The number of third-party cookies — little pieces of software set on users’ machines to track web users for ad targeting or site analytics purposes — rose from 1,887 on the home pages of the most-popular 100 websites in May to 2,324 in October, according to research from the University of California at Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. That’s a 23% leap.
Facebook remains tied to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement that “prohibits the company from changing privacy settings without the affirmative consent of users or misrepresenting the privacy or security of users’ personal information”.
Indeed, as of November 2011, Facebook agreed to bi-annual privacy audits for two decades as part of its deal with the FTC. At the time the US watchdog said Facebook must be clear about changes to its website, including providing a “prominent notice” to users.
The social network was told it should obtain “express consent” before a user’s information is shared beyond any privacy settings already established by an individual connected to Facebook.
Arguably then, Facebook is failing to honour at least part of its agreement with the FTC: the website did inform all of its users of the plans in an email outlining the proposed tweaks. But it may have fallen down on the requirement to seek “express consent” for sharing data beyond the limits set in place by users. That said, the stateside regulator is yet to publicly express any disquiet about the company’s incoming privacy policy overhaul.
In contrast, here in Europe, the office of Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner confirmed late last week that it was seeking “urgent clarification” from Facebook – whose European headquarters are in Dublin – about the changes.
via Data cops: Facebook privacy plans must be ‘modified’ • The Register.
Yahoo! has announced that it will ignore the default “Do Not Track” (DNT) signal broadcast by Microsoft Internet Explorer 10, on grounds that it does not accurately reflect user intent.
“Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction,” a Yahoo! spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. “In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them.”
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), browser vendors, and other industry bodies have been collaborating on DNT as a means to allow web users to opt out of certain kinds of behavior-tracking by websites and ad networks.
via Yahoo! will! ignore! ‘Do! Not! Track!’ from! IE10! • The Register.
EU data regulators have told Google that it has to make changes to its new privacy policy due to “incomplete information and uncontrolled combination of data across services”.
The regulators, led by France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique (CNIL), have spent several months investigating the policy, which basically allows Google to mash up all its previous 60 policies into one document and grab data on folks from across their services.
via EU data bosses order Google to sort out privacy • The Register.
Back in February The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights was formally unveiled in the US, and it endorses the ‘Do not track’ web browser functionality that already has the support of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.
In many respects it’s similar to the existing cookie laws being implemented across Europe. The Bill comes at the same time as the European Union is preparing similar regulations. I believe the current cookie law is flawed but has the right ideas at it’s heart. Making end users decide on a website by website basis is painful for the website owners having to implement code to ensure this happens and painful for the consumer it seeks to protect by bombarding them with information and pop-ups they will probably never read or understand.
I think making use of existing technology in the browser is by far the most sensible solution. The browser can contain a list of sites the user is happy to share data with and by default it could reject information sharing until a user has actively chosen to share data.
This would be persistent which is another concern for me when considering the cookie law. If a consumer deletes his/her cookies then their preferences are deleted.
So in the interest of seeing how website owners could honour DNT (do not track) I searched in vain for a matrix of browser support for the functionality within browsers. Information is sparse. Some sites quote browser support for DNT coming in new releases, others states that the browser already supports it (although I’ve not managed to find how to switch it on) . Add to this confusion that individual browser manufacturers are implementing DNT support in different ways and there is a headache waiting to happen.
I’m
Disclaimer: I currently work for AOL and work on privacy issues including the EU “cookie law”
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