Tag Archives: Privacy

Americans are being asked for their Facebook passwords at job interviews

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Being asked for your Facebook login and password at a job interview. Does this sound scary to you? It does to me that’s for sure, but nonetheless this was what happened to a guy from Seattle.

Justin Bassett from Seattle recently left a job interview in anger after being asked for his Facebook login information so the employer could check out his profile which was hidden from people who are not his friends. The employer had asked Justin the usual questions about experience, references and some character questions when she took out her laptop and found his profile on Facebook. Unfortunately for her Justin Bassett had been smart enough to hide all his personal information from strangers and only show it to people who are his friends on Facebook. The determined interviewer didn’t settle for this and so she turned the laptop around and asked Mr. Bassett for his login information so she could check out his profile.
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High school students’ Facebook photos ended up on porn site

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17 girls, some as young as 14 yeas old and all from the same high school in Massachusetts, were recently called to the dean’s office for some shocking news: Pictures of all of them were found on a pornographic website along with their personal information such as their name and the name of their high school.

Now a federal investigation is underway looking into how the pictures of the 17 girls ended up on the pornographic website. The FBI is looking into whether any laws were broken when someone downloaded pictures from Facebook and put them on their pornographic website. According to former prosecutor Bill Fallon, there might not have been any illegal actions taking place as the pictures were freely available on the internet already. Continue reading →

Get $25 from Google for sharing your search and browsing history

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Google is about to start a new project called Screenwise, they have already set up a signup page – it’s not yet active for sign-ups though – from this page you can read about their new project where they want to get their users to agree on giving them access to their browsing and search behaviors online via a browser plugin for Google Chrome. Here is what Google says themselves:

Google is building a new panel to learn more about how everyday people use the Internet.

The new project is called Screenwise. As a panelist, you’ll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.

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Google is being sued for consolidating its Privacy Policies

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As you may remember from last week, Google announced a (rather large) change to their privacy policies and if you are a Google user you have probably noticed that they have tried to make you aware of the changes with arrows pointing to it and by redirecting you to their policy page once.

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a suit in the Washington D.C. district court claiming that the upcoming privacy changes – which are planned to take effect March 1st – will cause “irreparable injury to EPIC and the public.” EPIC claims that the change violates a settlement agreement that Google and the FTC reached last march forbidding any privacy changes without consent from the user. EPIC wants the court to issue a temporary restraining order on Google, they also ask for a preliminary injunction compelling the FTC to enforce the settlement agreement from March last year.
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Google will now access and use all your personal data and browsing history

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Google has just announced a privacy policy change, it will take effect from March 1st, 2012. This seems to be the end of Google sticking to it’s long-standing promise of “don’t be evil“. The policy change was announced on the Google blog and the policy change basically means that if you are signed into your Google account using any service, Google can use the information on all their other services as well. Here’s how Google phrases it:

Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

If Google chooses to take full advantage of all the possibilities in this policy change it could have a huge impact on our daily use of the internet. Just try to think about how many services you use every day are owned and run by Google. One of the biggest things could be their steady growing market share on the smartphone OS field, just imagine how many people Google can track via the GPS in their Android phones, so if Google knows that you visit golf courses a lot based on your phone GPS they can spam you with golf ads on all pages you visit that are showing Google AdSense ads (and that’s most pages nowadays). They know which apps you download on your phone, which games you play and so could tailor your search results in Google search to show results based on that also. Because Google has AdSense ads on most pages they can track your every move online, and now that they’ve opened up the door for themselves to use that information, well no one can really know the consequences, but they could be very big. Continue reading →