Consumer Privacy

This being the Age of Social Media, Tuesday's extraordinary user revolt against Instagram was perhaps most easily viewed on Twitter, where shock and outrage mixed with fierce declarations swearing off the popular photo-sharing site for good. "Really sad to have to end my luv 4 @instagram," tweeted actress Tiffani Thiessen. "Will be deleting my account due 2 their ridiculous new terms. " The explosion of Instagram bashing was sparked by a planned policy change that appeared to give the photo-sharing...

Mozilla, the non-profit group that makes the Firefox browser, says that it will delay its plans for rolling out a version of its browser that would increase restrictions on cookies — pieces of code that allow companies to monitor how people use the Web. Developers said in March that a future version of Firefox could include a patch that automatically blocks cookies from sites that users have not visited directly, such as those placed by...

Facebook has settled complaints by the Federal Trade Commission, which alleged the company allowed advertisers and others to access users' personal information even though it promised to protect their privacy, the agency said Tuesday. The settlement over eight counts of privacy violations will force the the social network to obtain consent from consumers before changing its privacy policies. It also will be subject to regular, independent reviews of its practices for 20 years.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Edith Ramirez would face a congressional hearing on her confirmation as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. As a sitting FTC commissioner, Ramirez does not need to be confirmed by Congress. This version has been corrected. Edith Ramirez has been picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission, a government agency that has grappled with protecting consumer privacy and encouraging business competition during a time of swift change in the high-tech industry.

Lawmakers pressed representatives from Apple and Google to explain their privacy policies Tuesday, questioning whether the companies' practices ensure that mobile-phone users control their personal data. "I believe that consumers have a fundamental right to know what data is being collected about them," Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said at a hearing of the new Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law. "I also believe that they have a right to decide whether they want to share that information, and...

Google, facing growing scrutiny over its approach to consumer privacy, said Thursday it would open its social networking site to teenagers, matching the policies of its rivals, such as Facebook and MySpace. The move comes as some privacy advocates and lawmakers are seeking special protections for teens online, particularly on social networks where they tend to avidly share information about themselves. It also comes after a controversial move this week by Google to change its privacy policy . Beginning...

Can a new tech service that packages online news with social media features and a multi-tiered payment system (including subscriptions and micro-payments) save journalism? That's the question CircLabs, a new JV between the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) and a group of media entrepreneurs, will try to answer when it rolls out "Circulate," a personalized news syndication service later this year . Full details on how Circulate will work aren't clear,...

President-elect Barack Obama is about to face his first tests on consumer privacy, with questions about how much personal information Internet companies should be able to collect about consumers, how long they should keep that data, and whether they should use it to serve ads to Web surfers. The Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington group supported by AT&T, is pushing the transition team to appoint a chief privacy officer to shape standards about the use of consumer data. Separately, the Center for Digital Democracy and...

Shortly before Election Day, a Stanford graduate student reported that the campaign Web sites of President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were "leaking" personal information about their supporters through careless data handling. Had it been Facebook and Google, a federal investigation might have ensued, and the companies could have suffered significant public relations setbacks and perhaps fines. But the Federal Trade Commission, the government agency most focused on personal...

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission released a privacy framework that outlined the agency's suggestions for companies wrestling with the issue of consumer privacy. What did the FTC recommend?: The agency recommended that Congress consider baseline privacy legislation regulating data brokers, The Washington Post reported. As The Post's Cecilia Kang wrote, "The FTC called for legislation on data brokers — the Web's information middlemen, such as Lexis Nexis and Choicepoint — who take data that has been...

This being the Age of Social Media, Tuesday's extraordinary user revolt against Instagram was perhaps most easily viewed on Twitter, where shock and outrage mixed with fierce declarations swearing off the popular photo-sharing site for good. "Really sad to have to end my luv 4 @instagram," tweeted actress Tiffani Thiessen. "Will be deleting my account due 2 their ridiculous new terms. " The explosion of Instagram bashing was sparked by a planned policy change that appeared to give the photo-sharing...

Shortly before Election Day, a Stanford graduate student reported that the campaign Web sites of President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were "leaking" personal information about their supporters through careless data handling. Had it been Facebook and Google, a federal investigation might have ensued, and the companies could have suffered significant public relations setbacks and perhaps fines. But the Federal Trade Commission, the government agency most focused on personal...

Google agreed to pay a $22.5 million penalty — the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission — to settle charges that it failed to honor the privacy settings of millions of people who use Apple's Safari Web browser, regulators said Thursday. While the settlement had been widely reported prior to Thursday's announcement, the FTC used the opportunity to lay out its thinking on the case and defend itself against critics — including one of its commissioners — who say the fine should have been heftier.

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission released a privacy framework that outlined the agency's suggestions for companies wrestling with the issue of consumer privacy. What did the FTC recommend?: The agency recommended that Congress consider baseline privacy legislation regulating data brokers, The Washington Post reported. As The Post's Cecilia Kang wrote, "The FTC called for legislation on data brokers — the Web's information middlemen, such as Lexis Nexis and Choicepoint — who take data that has been...

The FederalTrade Commission released a final privacy report on Monday, outlining a framework for companies that collect online and offline consumer data. As The Washington Post reported , the document supports a "Do Not Track" mechanism that would attempt to give users more control over their own data. Here are some highlights from the report. On do not track: The FTC has said that it will work with industry groups that have already implemented their own do-not track programs.

Udpated at 11:45 a.m. The Federal Trade Commission on Monday outlined a framework for how companies should address consumer privacy, pledging that consumers will have "an easy to use and effective" "Do Not Track" option by the end of the year. The FTC's report comes a little over a month after the White House released a "privacy bill of rights" that called on companies to be more transparent about privacy and grant consumers greater access to their...

Has Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) been saying one thing and doing another when it comes to electronic health records? Consumer Watchdog presented lobbying records Tuesday that it says show that the internet giant may have pushed Congress to permit the sale of electronic medical records even though the company has said it did not. "From a policy perspective, we oppose the sale of medical information in the health care industry," Google Senior Policy...

AT&T and Verizon, two of the nation's leading Internet service providers, pledged yesterday to refrain from tracking customer Web behavior unless they receive explicit permission to do so. The announcement, made at a Senate committee hearing, represents a challenge to the rest of the Web world, where advertising is commonly delivered by companies that record a consumer's visits across multiple Web sites. The practice, known as "behavioral targeting," is largely invisible to customers and generally...

Jon Leibowitz is the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Prior to his tenure at the FTC, Leibowitz served as the democratic chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee where he focused on competition policy and telecommunications matters and also as chief counsel to Senator Herb Kohl. In the private sector, Leibowitz served most recently as vice president for congressional affairs for the Motion Picture Association of America. This interview was conducted by Tom Fox, who writes the...

After news broke that Google has been using code to circumvent Apple privacy settings on the Safari browser to serve personalized ads to its account holders, Microsoft took the opportunity to gleefully point out the privacy features in its Internet Explorer browser. "Apparently, Google has been able to track users of Apple's Safari browser while they surf the web on their Apple iPhones, iPads and Macs," wrote Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's general manager for Internet Explorer Business and Marketing in a ...