Facebook is updating its data use policy in an attempt to give people more clarity on how the company uses information they share.
If you want to participate in today’s Internet, and all the apps and services that go with it, you have two choices: Accept that your information is out there and try not to worry about it, or arm yourself with some privacy protection tools. Should you choose the latter path, check out these apps and services to help you stay anonymous online and keep your information out of the wrong hands.
The lines are blurry when it comes to who exactly owns what you post on social media networks like Twitter. That’s why developers have created an alternative set of social media tools with privacy in mind, including the newly-released version of Vibe, out now for iOS and soon for Android.
Upload your private diary, novel manuscript, amateur movie or digitally crafted song to Google’s new Google Drive and it’s totally impervious to company tinkering, right? Not necessarily.
On top of the photos, posts, messages and list of friends that you could download before, now you can get information on things like previous Facebook names, friend requests and the IP addresses you’ve logged in from.
Some people really like stats. For those people, Google has rolled out a new Account Activity feature.
When the story broke about some employers asking potential employees for their Facebook passwords in job interviews, the public was understandably upset. Apparently, so was Facebook. This morning, chief privacy officer Erin Egan came to the defense of the company’s users, stating that nobody has the right to ask for your password.
DuckDuckGo’s commitment to user privacy was more or less an afterthought. If you aren’t familiar with the site, it’s a search engine with a decidedly spare aesthetic that doesn’t log IP addresses or record your search history.
Apple fans can be a little crazy in their devotion to anything with an “i” tacked onto the front of it, but a new survey shows just how far that cult-like following stretches: Nearly half of people who use Apple devices would be willing to trust the computer giant with their savings.
Match.com, eHarmony and Sparks Networks (operator of JDate and ChristianMingle) will scan the histories of possible clients for sexual assault, identity theft and violence before allowing them access to their fee-based sites.
With so much concern over privacy in the digital world, it’s worth noting how the careful disclosure of consumer data might actually help.
