Privacy and data protection

One of the world's most popular cross-platform applications "violates" international privacy laws, according to the Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities, because it requires users to provide their entire contact list to the service.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Dutch Data Protection Authority today announced their findings for what they called a "collaborative investigation into the handling of personal information" by the California-based company.

WhatsApp, an instant messenger application for iPhone, Android devices, and BlackBerry smartphones, provides a free service to rival text messaging, and sends more than 1 billion … Read more

Twitter gives government agencies in the United States at least some of the information they ask for on users 69 percent of the time.

That data and much more about how the social network responds to government requests for user information, as well as demands to remove tweets and reports of copyright violations was part of Twitter's second so-called transparency report, which it issued today "in celebration of" Data Privacy Day. Google issued such a report today as well.

"We've been thinking about ways in which we can more effectively share this information, with an … Read more

That includes a new section the company today added to its Transparency Report that answers questions users may have, such as "In what situations wouldn't you tell me about a request for my information?" (The answer is: Google can't notify you if your account is closed or if the company is legally prohibited from doing so. "We sometimes fight to give users notice of a data request by seeking to lift gag orders or unseal … Read more

PARK CITY, UTAH--The most arresting moment in "Google and the World Brain," Ben Lewis' thoughtful new documentary about the search giant's effort to scan all the world's books, takes place not in Mountain View or a courtroom but rather a monastery high above Catalonia in Spain.

The film's globetrotting crew is interviewing Father Damiá Roure, who runs the library at the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat, about what happened when Google came to digitize the library's collection. Roure speaks happily of the Googlers' visit, explaining that their efforts allowed the monks to bring their … Read more

The number of official requests Google receives for information about its users is steadily increasing -- particularly in the United States, which between July and December once again outpaced the world.

In the second half of 2012, Google received 8,438 requests for information, up 6 percent from the first half of 2012. Globally, Google received 21,389 requests for information, up 2 percent from the first half 2012. The number of requests went up even as the number of users affected went down -- a 9 percent decrease in the United States, and 3 percent globally.

The countries making … Read more

Anyone interested in how Google's privacy policies over the years can easily compare previous versions, thanks to an archive the company has set up online. But one of the earliest privacy policies is nowhere to be found -- and it's a shame, filmmaker Cullen Hoback says, because it's a policy that put users' privacy first.

"A cookie can tell us, 'This is the same computer that visited Google two days ago,' but it cannot tell us, 'This person is Joe Smith' or even, 'This person lives in the United States,'" reads the policy, published in … Read more

You do realize that those nice people in Transport Security Administration uniforms have been examining your naked body, don't you?

You do realize that scanning machines arrived so swiftly in U.S. airports that there wasn't time to write software to preserve what remains of your modesty -- as you hold your hands up in surrender, just so that you can fly to Seattle?

Ah, you didn't.

Well, I bring news of a cover-up.

No, not that sort of cover-up. The TSA has decided that it's had enough of staring at your denuded selves -- perhaps … Read more

Hardly a day goes by that some high-profile person -- along with countless people of lower profile -- has an account hacked. Weak password, stolen password, non-existent password -- whatever the cause, breaking into our digital lives is easy and getting easier.

That's why Google says passwords are no longer the best solution for sensitive accounts. "We contend that security and usability problems are intractable," write Google's Eric Grosse and Mayank Upadhyay, in an article to be published later this month in IEEE Security & Privacy. "It's time to give up on elaborate password … Read more

Proposed legislation in the European Union would force tech companies that have access to user data -- such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft -- to report any security breaches to local cybersecurity agencies, the Financial Times reported today.

This is the European Commission's effort to make private companies accountable for privacy and security problems, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told the Financial Times.

If passed, the measure would require each of the EU's 27 member states to set up local cybersecurity agencies to implement security standards on online networks. Social networks, e-commerce companies, and large online platforms … Read more