Privacy

A Look at the Facebook Privacy Class Action (Beacon) Settlement

Facebook announced on Friday that it settled the class action challenging its "Beacon" advertising program. Net result? Facebook establishes a privacy foundation funded with $9.5 million (or what's left of this amount after attorneys' fees, costs, and class claims are deducted)... Beacon was an advertising program launched in November 2007 which (roughly speaking) allowed the transmission of purchase and consumer-related information between partner retailers, Facebook, and of course, your Facebook friends. I don't think many people have a sense of all of the contours of the program...

Skype’s End User License Agreement

I was looking at the End User License Agreement to which Skype wants people to assent. I noticed the following odd provision (Section 3.2.4): You hereby grant to Skype a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable licence to Use the Content in any media in connection with the Skype Software, the Products and the Skype Website.

Email Snooping Can Be Intrusion Upon Seclusion

Analysis could also affect liability of enterprises using cloud computing technologies... Local elected official Steinbach had an email account that was issued by the municipality. Third party Hostway provided the technology for the account. Steinbach logged in to her Hostway webmail account and noticed eleven messages from constituents had been forwarded by someone else to her political rival.

Defining Broadband

The FCC is seeking public comments to help create a better definition of "broadband". The effort is in relation to its development of a National Broadband Plan by February 2010 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Accurately noting that "broadband can be defined in myriad ways" and "tends to center on download and upload throughput," the FCC seeks a more robust definition. The definition will be part of the governance over those receiving funding for broadband development as part of the Recovery Act. This could get interesting.

Privacy Commissioner Finds Facebook Violating Canadian Privacy Law

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has released its long-awaited finding in the complaint against Facebook on a variety of privacy grounds. The complaint was launched by CIPPIC in May 2008 (note that I am an advisor to CIPPIC but had no involvement in this complaint). The case marks an important step in assessing how Canadian privacy law addresses social media with the Commissioner identifying some significant concerns. Moreover, as the case potentially heads to court, it will be closely watched to see whether the findings can be enforced against a global social media power like Facebook.

Data Security: Being Open About Secrecy

It must be tricky to be an advocate of transparency when your job involves selling serious encryption tools to government departments, large and small companies, hospitals and people who are concerned about having their bank account details hijacked from a home PC. After all, the point about good encryption software and the systems that surround it is that they provide a way to keep your secrets secret, while open government and the effective regulation of financial services would seem to require the widest possible dissemination of all sorts of operational data...

A Clear Case for ISP Regulation: IP Address Logging

Over on the Network Neutrality Squad yesterday, I noted, without comment, the following quote from the new Time Warner Cable privacy policy bill insert: "Operator's system, in delivering and routing the ISP Services, and the systems of Operator's Affiliated ISPs, may automatically log information concerning Internet addresses you contact, and the duration of your visits to such addresses." Today I will comment, and explain why such logging by ISPs creates a clear case for regulatory intervention, on both privacy and competition grounds.

Do You Care About Your Privacy?

ICANN is currently going through a complicated process in order to introduce more Top-Level Domains (TLDs). While the launch of new TLDs is something that a lot of people will welcome it is not without its issues. One of the areas that has been receiving quite a bit of attention is in relation to intellectual property rights. So what has this got to do with privacy?

Contributory Cybersquatting and the Impending Demise of Domain Name Proxy Services?

This case involves an alleged domain name theft. Solid Host is a web host and initial owner of the domain name solidhost.com, which it registered through eNom in 2004. Solid Host claims that in 2008, a security breach at eNom allowed an unknown interloper (Doe) to steal the domain name and move the registration to NameCheap. Doe also acquired NameCheap's "WhoisGuard" service, a domain name proxy service that masked Doe's contact information in the Whois database. Solid Host contacted Doe and sought the domain name; Doe asked for $12,000, and Solid Host took a pass...

ICANN IRT Report Open for Comment With Short Timeframe?

The Intellectual Property Constituency's draft report on trademark issues is now available for comment. The draft report was put together behind closed doors, which would appear to go against the normal policy development process at ICANN, which is quite worrying. Its contents, however, are even more disturbing...