The popular online store Amazon keeps a record of a customer’s preferences by tracking actions on Amazon properties but also on third party sites that display Amazon advertisements. These information are then used to display personalized ads to the user. Personalized advertisements can appear both on Amazon websites but also on third party websites that [...]
- Author: Mike Halsey MVP
- Comments: 1
Facebook confirms new privacy settings rollout
Following the announcement yesterday by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that his company had “missed the mark” on privacy, the social networking giant today confirmed that a new set of privacy settings would roll out to users beginning tomorrow, May 26th according to the BBC. Facebook’s vice-president of product Chris Cox said the whole incident had [...]
- Author: Mike Halsey MVP
- Comments: 2
Facebook founder admits they dropped the ball on privacy
In a column today in the Washington Post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admits they “missed the mark” on recent privacy concerns, as reported by the BBC. Recent changes to the website have caused thousands of members to leave the website, annoyed that their personal details were made available to Internet search engines, and concerned about [...]
- Author: Mike Halsey MVP
- Comments: 4
Facebook mulls privacy climbdown
Facebook has come under some pressure from consumer groups in recent months over it’s privacy policies, and has had to make some significant changes to it’s terms and conditions in response to pressure from it’s own users. Now after further criticism, this time from the US Senate, European Union and civil liberty groups, the popular [...]
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 4
Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization Feature
The Web in 2010 seems to be all about personalization. First we got search engine personalization and now we got Facebook’s Instant Personalization feature introduced a few days ago at the F8 conference. Instant Personalization has caused some unrest amongst tech savvy Internet users. But what does it do? It basically allows partner sites (currently [...]
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 2
Google Government Requests
Google yesterday released a new tool that they call Government Requests tool which is a visual representation of the request Google received from government agencies to remove content or provide information about users of their services and products. The map shows the number of requests that Google has received between July 1, 2009 and December [...]
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 5
What The Internet Knows About You
Most Internet users know that a website they visit can access various information about the computer system used to make the connection. This includes the screen resolution, operating system, IP address and web browser among other things. But those are not the only information that can be gathered when users visit a website. What would [...]
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 1
Google Buzz Privacy Issue
Google Buzz has been announced publicly just a few days ago. It basically allows Gmail users to use social networking features that are similar to those offered on Twitter. Gmail users can follow others, write status notifications, post images or videos and read messages that are posted by their contacts. And the way those contact [...]
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 6
How Unique Is Your Web Browser’s Fingerprint?
Servers can identify various technical information about a connecting web browser and computer system including the screen resolution, user agent that includes the operating system, web browser version, plugins that are installed or the user’s timezone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an interesting theory that it is possible to track web browsers based on [...]