Facebook faces privacy questions
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Facebook is to be quizzed about its data protection policies by the Information Commissioner's Office.
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Google responds to attacks on its privacy record.
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Privacy may soon become a much bigger deal to the Web 2.0 world.That&#39;s because Web 2.0&#39;s ability to mash up components from different Web sites into one customized user experience can also lead to a disconnect between the privacy users expect and what they actually receive, according to Jonathan Pincus, general manager of strategy development with Microsoft&#39;s Online Services Group. &quot;In the Web 2.0 world, one of the really interesting changes is privacy becomes as important an issue as security,&quot; he said in a recent interview.&quot;Because there&#39;s so much more information out there and the lines of sharing it get so much blurrier,&quot; he added, &quot;people usually assume there are a lot more privacy guarantees then there actually are.&quot;Pincus predicted that this misplaced sense of privacy may ultimately be exposed in the most prominent of public policy forums: the tabloid press. &quot;At some point soon there&#39;s going to be some kind of major court case or high-profile divorce in which some kind of information from a social-networking site gets used as a key piece of evidence,&quot; he said. &quot;Sort of like what happened with Kobe Bryant and the phone records being available. People were kind of surprised, &#39;Oh they can get at the phone information?&#39; Stuff like that gives people a very different viewpoint on privacy.&quot;In 2004, a judge granted Bryant&#39;s lawyers access to text message records of a woman who had accused the Los Angeles Lakers basketball star of rape. The charges against Bryant were later dropped.Microsoft has been trying to promote itself as a leader in the online privacy space in recent months. On Tuesday, the company released data showing that attackers are increasingly targeting personal information.In the first six months of 2007, Microsoft counted 31.6 million phishing scams, a jump of 150 percent from the six months prior. The company&#39;s Security Intelligence Report also tracked a 500 percent increase in Trojan downloaders, which are malicious programs used to install other malware on victim&#39;s systems.&quot;As the security of the operating system improves, we are seeing cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, diverse, and targeted in their methods of stealing personal information,&quot; Microsoft said in a statement on the report. &quot;Personal information is the currency of crime, and malicious attackers are targeting it to make their cyberattacks and other scams more authentic, credible, and successful, and to make a profit.&quot;However, one security researcher said that phishers may now be moving beyond ID theft and looking to even more lucrative areas, such as pump-and-dump stock scams. In these scams, criminals flood inboxes with e-mails promoting penny stocks and then sell shares when the stock price rises.&quot;Everything I&#39;ve read and seen suggests that these attacks may be successful in stealing information but that it is difficult for the attackers to turn that information into revenue,&quot; said Brandon Enright, a network security analyst at the University of California, San Diego, in an e-mail interview on&#160;Tuesday. &quot;The [Microsoft] study didn&#39;t cover pump and dump at all. I suspect if it had, they would have pump-and-dump scams growing much more rapidly than 150 percent over the previous 6 to 12 months.&quot;Two of the most organized online criminal groups -- the creators of the Rustock and&#160;Storm&#160;malware -- have turned to pump-and-dump scams, he added. &quot;They could execute basically any attack they wanted. They chose pump and dump. That says a lot about how lucrative the various attacks are.&quot;
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There was a time when privacy was a well-defined notion. It meant your business was your business and people were entitled to know about it only if you wanted them to.
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NEW YORK - The operators of the online hangout Facebook wanted to help users save time by highlighting changes their friends make to their personal profile pages. Instead, the new feature has drawn complaints from thousands of its users and even threats of a boycott.
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Facebook announced yesterday that it is taking the unusual step of allowing the public to develop features for the popular social-networking Web site, permitting any software designer to access the company's millions of members.
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The federal government's latest attempt to improve security checks of airline passengers is prompting privacy concerns here and abroad.
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Blog: By using the new AskEraser tool, users will be able to set their privacy preferences so the search engine does not retain their Web search history.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.
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A security researcher discovers that private Facebook profiles can reveal startlingly personal information.
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Following the example set last week by Ask.com's AskEraser announcement, Microsoft has jouned the push toward greater user privacy protections for search-engine queries. The company will introduce an anonymous-surfing option and a new data-retention policy that will purge identifiable info after 18 months.
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Social-networking site Facebook is ramping up efforts on a major new advertising plan that would let marketers tailor ads for the millions of Facebook customers who provide a mountain of information about themselves on the site, according to major advertisers and analysts briefed on the system.
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The online advertising firm has launched a new program for serving ads to third-party developer applications on Facebook--but what will Facebook's own advertising announcement next week mean for this sort of strategy?
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A new online feature of Google Maps called Street View is stirring up a debate over privacy concerns on the Web.
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The possibility of a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo is raising concerns among privacy advocates, who worry that it could lead to even more  tracking of online behavior for advertising purposes.
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Company reps keep the flaw secret Facebook users who type sensitive information into a site feature known as Notes may be interested in knowing that it is currently experiencing a bug that allows documents designated as private to be read anyway.â¦
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By Anick Jesdanun  NEW YORK - The operators of the online hangout site Facebook.com wanted to help users save time by highlighting changes their friends make to their personal profile pages. Instead, the new feature has drawn complaints from thousands of users and even threats of a boycott.