If you’ve been thinking that Facebook plans to allow third party applications access to your address and phone number sound a little worrying, you’re not alone; four Democratic senators have written to Mark Zuckerberg to express their concern and ask him to reconsider.
Facebook first announced in January that third party apps would be …
Did you know you had a Google Profile? Because you probably do, and as TIME’s Joel Stein discovered this week, it might be just another case of big business knowing more about you than you might think.
If you have a Google account – which you will have, if you’ve ever signed up for a Google online service like Gmail, Google Docs, or …
Joel Stein’s cover piece for TIME this week is about online data mining—how marketing companies know so much about you just by simply tracking your web surfing habits. It’s an interesting and/or terrifying read, depending upon your disposition. Whatever the case, there are several quick and easy steps you can take to prevent your …
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
Social networking site Facebook created quite a stir last month when it announced that it would share much more personal details of its users — such as addresses and phone numbers — with third party developers. The move was so controversial that the company …
If you’re like most people who use the web, you may be unaware that many of the sites you visit have been taking notes about your browsing behavior.
These notes are stored in tiny files called cookies—everyone likes cookies, right?—and are used by several large advertising companies to build what’s supposed to be a non-identifying …
This week, city council members from Huntington Beach, Calif. considered requiring their local police to post mug shots of all DUI offenders on Facebook. For a society that has moved on from physical punishment in public, our Scarlet Letter complex is still frighteningly unwavering.
(More on Techland: AMBER Alerts Now Dispatched Via …
Sometimes you want to share some photos of that fun trip with your friends when you went to Oktoberfest, dressed up in lederhosen and then passed out in the grass from too much revelry, but you don’t want everyone to see it – especially your future employers. If this scenario sounds like something that could happen to you, consider using …
Late Friday night, Facebook announced a new round of privacy settings for third-party applications via the company’s developers blog.
(More on Techland: Facebook Forecast 2011: E-Commerce & Mobile)
In essence, the changes are minuscule. From now on, users who accept the terms and conditions of a Facebook app will grant that …
Updated 2:30 pm near bottom of post, to clarify recipient of a letter from Yahoo’s lawyers.
The tech world is abuzz with a remarkable display of backbone by Twitter in the Wikileaks case. It deserves wider notice.
Federal prosecutors want to indict Julian Assange for making public a great many classified …
Against all odds, the government has managed to make the issue of online privacy even more boring. It’s true! Several news outlets (including this one now) are referring to a recent proposal from the Commerce Department as “the privacy bill of rights,” to try to spice things up a bit.
In reality, it’s a 70-page document called the …
Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission backed an Internet consumer protection plan that would let browsers chose whether or not they’ll allow their Web activity to be monitored. Claiming that large Internet companies haven’t done enough to protect the privacy of their users, the FTC has asked for a “Do Not Track” option be made …
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a story concerning the inadvertent passing of Facebook users’ personal information between popular third-party Facebook applications and several outside marketing agencies and data-gathering firms.
Every Facebook user is assigned a unique, non-identifying, numeric “user ID” that’s …
