By Joe Palazzolo dapd Facebook Inc. has reached a “settlement agreement in principle” with a group of users who allege the social network used their names and likeness in paid advertisements without their consent. The agreement was disclosed in a court filing Monday in federal court in San Jose; the terms of it were not. U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh has requested that the parties file a report on the progress of the�settlement�discussions by Friday. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.�Lawyers for�the plaintiffs, who represent a purported class of users, didn’t immediately respond to Law Blog’s request for comment. The lawsuit targets Facebook’s �Sponsored Story,� a type of ad that is created when a Facebook user �likes� a product or service. That endorsement is ... Continue reading →
By Julia AngwinPaul Ohm, a law professor and privacy expert at the University of Colorado, is expected to join the Federal Trade Commission in August as a senior policy adviser focusing on Internet and mobile markets, according to people familiar with the situation. The appointment signals the agency’s continued commitment to bringing privacy and technology related cases. In the past year, the FTC has forged 20-year privacy agreements with Internet giants Google, Facebook and MySpace. Ohm is a former federal computer crimes prosecutor and an expert in information privacy. His 2010 paper, “Broken Promises: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization” sparked a global reassessment of privacy standards. Ohm is also a computer programmer and works to bridge connections between the law and computer science. ... Continue reading →
BY SHARON TERLEP, SUZANNE VRANICA AND SHAYNDI RAICE General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising on Facebook after the company's marketing executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers, people familiar with the matter said, a move that comes as more companies question the effectiveness of advertising on the social networking site. The largest U.S. auto maker will continue to expand its use of marketing through Facebook's pages, in which markers can display content at no cost, these people said. The news comes at a bad time for Facebook Inc. The Menlo Park-based social network is expected to hold a historic initial public offering on Friday. ...BY SHARON TERLEP, SUZANNE VRANICA AND SHAYNDI RAICE General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising on Facebook ... Continue reading →
Guessing that most journalists would prefer not to tell the world their exact 24x7 whereabouts I tweeted her right away… Guest post by Laura Fitton, the founder of oneforty.com which was acquired by HubSpot in 2011 I once had an amazing opportunity to connect with Julia Angwin via Twitter. It was in oneforty.com’s very early days - pre launch - and though it did not lead to coverage, it’s a great example of what’s so great about Twitter for connecting with journalists. I was following Julia for quite a while knowing that her WSJ tech beat was relevant for oneforty.com’s Twitter AppStore initial focus. One evening I recall being in my toddler’s bed waiting for her to fall all the way to sleep and keeping ... Continue reading →
BY JEREMY SINGER-VINE A security lapse at the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter.com exposed more than 70,000 project ideas that weren't ready to be viewed. The information that could be seen didn't include credit-card numbers or other sensitive personal details, but it could make users more wary of Kickstarter's data practices and lower their expectations of privacy on the site. The lapse stemmed from a website update in late April, the company conceded on Sunday. Kickstarter provides an online platform for users to raise money from friends and strangers for project-based creative endeavors, such as building a videogame, making a documentary or recording an ...BY JEREMY SINGER-VINE A security lapse at the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter.com exposed more than 70,000 project ideas that weren't ready to ... Continue reading →
Facebook revamps its "data use policy" Facebook is revamping its privacy policy* (which it likes to call a “data use policy”), fulfilling a pledge it made to the Irish privacy regulator to be more transparent and detailed about how it will and won’t use the dirt it has on its users. You can see the new policy (with tracked changes) here. The two main things you need to know: Facebook used to keep data it received about you from advertisers and third parties for 180 days; now they say they’ll keep it for as long as necessary to provide you with a service. Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan says that means that if Zynga tells Facebook who their top scoring players are in order to ... Continue reading →
Today anonymous hackers leaked more than 55.000 hacked twitter accounts username and password through Pastebin. It was very shocking to see such a massive number of Twitter accounts are hacked. Also celebrity accounts are hacked. 'The micro blogging platform is aware of this hack and was taking necessary actions to save those people’s account from malicious activity', said a Twitter insider. It was huge, 55.000+ accounts has been hacked and it wasn’t possible to share such a huge pile of usernames and passwords in a single paste. So it took the hackers five Pastebin pages to leak the data. This hack is just an alert to other millions of Twitter users that they could be hacked anytime. Unbelievable that Twitter isn’t taking any necessary steps ... Continue reading →
