Congressman Wants Consumers to Have Personal Information Take-Down Right

TechLaw: Congressman Wants Consumers to Have Personal Information Take-Down Right:

There is a lot that can be said about this legislation, none of it positive, except for the fact that there is little chance it will be enacted into law. Nobody in Washington is talking about giving individuals this level of control over their personal information. The FTC is worried about consumers' lack of understanding about what is being done with their personal information and their inability to exert meaningful control over that. Businesses would like lawmakers to focus on personal information misuse and let the marketplace decide how much information collection and processing is desirable. (This is how Washington solved the Great Anti-Spyware Scare: it legislated against the really bad stuff, but gave business free rein for everything else that's not deceptive or criminal.) Nobody is talking about giving consumers a quasi take-down right.

Facebook's Social Web: How to Protect Your Privacy

Facebook's Social Web: How to Protect Your Privacy - PCWorld

Protecting your privacy on Facebook can feel like a full-time job. The social network has made a habit of tweaking its privacy policies with some regularity -- and in many cases, it's up to you to take proactive steps in order to keep your info out of the public eye.

This week's introduction of Facebook's "Open Graph" is no exception. By default, you're now opted in to the company's new social sharing services, and this time, they stretch way beyond the confines of Facebook.com.

If you're comfortable with that, more power to you. But if you'd rather keep your personal preferences private, here's a step-by-step guide to taking back control.

I consider myself fairly well-versed when it comes to online social networking, but even I have become confused with Facebook's changes over the past few months. Some options moved, some changed, some disappeared all together (or so it seems.) This is a great guide, but I find it ridiculous that it even needed to be written in the first place. I have a feeling my days on Facebook are numbered.

Edit to add: Here is a tool you can run to see what of your information is viewable publicly through the Facebook Graph API.

and now for a little humor...

From one of my favorite e-comics, Toothpaste for Dinner

Privacy police take aim at social media giants

Privacy police take aim at social media giants - news aggregated by newzfor.me - feeder for twitter

By flexing their muscle, the regulators are seeking to corral rapidly-growing web giants, including Google and Facebook, that now house billions of gigabytes of information about users age, race, location and web-viewing habits.

Google launches new government transparency tool

FP Tech Desk: Google launches new government transparency tool - FP Posted:

Google Inc. has launched a new tool which the search engine giant hopes will shed some light on how it handles the sensitive private information of its users and how it responds to requests for information from the governments of the world.

Here it is: Google Government Requests

snopes.com: Spokeo

snopes.com: Spokeo

Spokeo is one of many sites now operating on the Internet that aggregate and display personal information collected from a variety of public sources (such as social networking accounts, blog posts, phone book listings, customer-submitted reviews, real estate listings, etc., as well as from databases of other information aggregators) and sell detailed reports on individuals to anyone who pays for them.

I found out about this site through a friend who posted it to her Facebook wall. It intrigued me, and I proceeded to look up just about everyone that I know well. I noticed that while most information was accurate (for instance: age and address), a lot was not (for instance: zodiac sign was off by one for just about everyone.) The "meme" on Facebook informed everyone that they could simply remove their information from the website, which seemed to satisfy most people. I couldn't help but wonder, however, how that would really solve the problem. As Snopes states:

Spokeo does have a privacy policy that allows you to request that Spokeo remove your listing from public searches, but it's important to understand that even if you block your Spokeo listing, your personal information will still be available through the underlying sources used by Spokeo. Those third-party records will still exist and will still be publicly accessible, so the same information provided by Spokeo will still be available to others.

And where exactly does Spokeo get their information? Their website states that Spokeo collects their information from "phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites, and other public sources," with specific mention of only whitepages.com and zillow.com. Snopes goes on to discuss their success with blocking records, and speculates on Spokeo's collection methods, by stating:

Our repeated trials with requesting the blocking of a particular record through Spokeo's privacy page have found the procedure to be highly questionable: no attempt is made to verify that the person requesting the blocking of a record is the person identified by that record, our efforts have never resulted in a successfully blocked record, and Spokeo's customer service group has not responded to any inquiries. All of this has led some to speculate that one of Spokeo's core businesses is actually the collecting of e-mail addresses.