Privacy Policy

(amended as of Nov. 15, 2011) At the same time that The Washington Post Company and washingtonpost.com are committed to bringing you information tailored to your individual needs, we recognize the importance of protecting the privacy of your personally identifiable information. In adopting this privacy policy, our intent is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using personally identifiable information and your reasonable expectations of privacy. Please note: this policy applies only to information collected by washingtonpost.com...

Instagram users: there's a change coming this week. Those who use the photo service should have received a reminder from the company about its scheduled switch over to new terms of service. In that e-mail, Instagram reiterated that the change will not include controversial language related to how the photos can be used for advertising. The company also said that the new terms of service take effect on Saturday, not today as originally planned. In an e-mail to its users, the company pointed to a blog post...

Instagram users: there's a change coming this week. Those who use the photo service should have received a reminder from the company about its scheduled switch over to new terms of service. In that e-mail, Instagram reiterated that the change will not include controversial language related to how the photos can be used for advertising. The company also said that the new terms of service take effect on Saturday, not today as originally planned. In an e-mail to its users, the company pointed to a blog post...

The simple story line from this week's uprising against Instagram is this: Powerful tech company pushes the line on privacy and sparks such widespread user outrage that it has no choice but to retreat . Score: Users 1, Instagram 0. But there is a more complicated story line — one that is much harder to score, and more worrisome for those who regard personal privacy as something of a sacred right. The tip-off for me came when I interviewed Fordham University law professor Susan Scafidi on...

One day after it announced a sweeping change to its privacy policy, Google is facing some heat for the decision. Hayley Tsukayama reports : Google's announcement that it is sharing more user data across its services has already raised the hackles of privacy advocates, technology writers and caught the attention of at least one national data-protection agency. On Tuesday, the  search giant announced  that it was placing 60 of its Web services under a unified privacy policy that would allow the company to share data...

Several weeks ago, I bought some exercise videos online. Then I noticed that whenever I did an Internet search about anything, an ad for that same video package and other similar workout videos kept popping up. It was spooky. The whole thing reminded me of two scenes from the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report. " In one, as Cruise is walking through a mall, various holographic ads pop up. There's a commercial for Lexus, and, as Cruise strolls along, a voiceover says: "The road you're on, John Anderton, is the one less...

Google is defending its new privacy policy, stressing that the company isn't collecting more data, just collecting it in a new way. We're making things simpler and we're trying to be upfront about it. Period," said Google's policy manager Betsy Masiello in a blog post Thursday evening. Google's privacy policy: Who will be affected and how you can choose what information gets shared The company recently announced big changes to its privacy policy , posting notifications...

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...

LAST YEAR, GOOGLE entered into a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegedly deceptive practices involving its Google Buzz social network. Last month — about the time when the European Commission was contemplating stronger protections for personal data on the Web — the Internet behemoth unveiled a new privacy policy. The announcement has not been universally applauded: The European Union has since asked Google to put the new policy on hold , and a group of Internet...

Google is defending its privacy policy changes yet again, this time to Congress. "Last week we heard from members of Congress about Google's plans to update our privacy policies by consolidating them into a single document on March 1," said Google direct of public policy Pablo Chavez in a blog post . "Protecting people's privacy is something we think about all day across the company, and we welcome discussions about our approach. " In the wake of this letter from the Congress, Google has...

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...

Hoaxes are hard things to put down — particularly when they seem to offer something that people want. to hear. Such is the case with the latest Facebook hoax, actually a rehash of one that cropped up in June , that claims users can change their copyright rights by simply posting a status message. The post illustrates both how little users know about their digital rights and how much they want clear control over content they post to Facebook. The statement, which users are copying and pasting onto their...

Parts of Facebook's proposed new privacy policy conflict with European law, a key regulator said Friday as he moved to give users in the European Union more power to block the sharing of their data with the company's affiliates such as Instagram. Regulators alerted Facebook about the problem shortly after the company announced major changes Wednesday in how it will treat users' personal data, said Gary T. Davis, deputy data protection commissioner in Ireland. His office oversees ...

The privacy policies of Google and other tech firms could allow them to mine personal data held by government agencies that use cloud-based e-mail, database and document services, an industry group warned. The group, SafeGov.org, a consortium of industry experts promoting safe government use of cloud services, raised the concern as Google has sought to defuse controversy over changes to its privacy policy that allow for more extensive tracking of consumers. SafeGov.org first ...

Regulators from three continents presented a unified face Tuesday in criticizing Google's tracking of users across services and calling for major changes in its privacy policy. But a key player declined to participate: the U.S. government. Though the news conference was set in Paris, the regulators from 27 European nations sought to invoke what they said were universal principles of data privacy, with users having control over what kind of personal information is collected, how it's used and how long it's...

The confusion over digital privacy laws has led some app developers to work on bridging the information gap. Instead of expecting consumers to read lengthy privacy policies about how their personal data could be used, the Association for Competitive Technology — an international trade organization representing developers — has released a set of visual icons for developers to present to consumers along with their apps. Developers can download icons from the ACT Web site, indicating...

Google is moving ahead with a planned change to its privacy policy, despite a request from E.U. regulators that they delay the decision. Cecilia Kang reports : European regulators on Tuesday warned Google that its new privacy policy set to take effect Thursday appears to violate privacy rules, and they asked the search giant to delay the changes. In a letter to Google chief executive Larry Page, France's data protection agency (CNIL) officials said on behalf of European Union members that, after a preliminary...

Two days after Google announced sweeping changes to its privacy policy, analysts are weighing on who might be most affected by it. Cecilia Kang reports : Google this week announced a shift in its privacy policies that will allow it to follow the activities of users as they move across the firm's Web sites, including its highly popular YouTube, Gmail and main search engine. The company emphasized in interviews that the change would apply only to users who are signed on to...

The Google Drive cloud storage service launched yesterday to much fanfare, but as with any new Google product, there are important questions about how the company will actually use personal data uploaded to the system. Google sells ads against your data, after all, and the more data you give the company, the more opportunity it has to screw up. That means the Google Drive terms of service and privacy policy are critically important, and there's been a lot of selective interpretation floating...

Facebook is updating its privacy policies, but don't freak out yet. We've looked through the amendments and pulled out the ones you should know about. Disagree with anything you see? The social network is letting you comment on each change with your concerns before they go live. The majority of the privacy policy changes are that of language. Indeed, the first change on Facebook's list is to stop calling it a "privacy policy. " From now on, Facebook will refer to it as the Data Use Policy — "data use"...