Category archives: Privacy Policy

 

 

Japanese court orders Google to halt Instant search for suggesting one man be fired

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Could Google Instant suggest you out of a job? According to one Japanese man’s claims, that search algorithm is precisely what landed him a pink slip and permanent spot on the unemployment line. The Kyodo News Agency is reporting that a string of unflattering searches performed by the plaintiff’s former employer allegedly linked him to a host of illegal and unflattering behavior, leading to his eventual termination. Baseless claims of a paranoiac? One Tokyo court doesn’t think so, as the search giant’s been issued an injunction that temporarily bars the use of autocomplete in the country. So far, Mountain View’s refused to bow down to the order and maintains its service is consistent with user privacy policies. Our currently jobless John Doe-san would beg to differ and had previously sought the company’s assistance in deleting the offending queries before seeking judicial aide, albeit to no avail. Should be interesting to see how this case plays out, seeing as the infraction is the first of its kind and could potentially alter the legal parameters of internet queries. We’ll keep you posted on further developments as this courtroom drama continues to play out. Japanese court orders Google to halt Instant search for suggesting one man be fired originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink ABC News | Kyodo News Agency | Email this | Comments

 

FTC wants new privacy framework: asks for simple controls, transparent policies

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There’s plenty of people bothered by the dossiers of data companies like Facebook and Google can (and do) compile on their users, particularly in places across the pond . Now, the Federal Trade Commission has come up with a privacy framework to help address consumer concerns and provide companies with best practices to proliferate better privacy policies. This new plan is articulated in the FTC’s recently released privacy report, and seeks to persuade companies to adopt a Privacy by Design ethos. Companies can do this by building in simplified privacy controls throughout product development and making info collection and practices transparent to users. In order to meet these goals, the FTC came up with a five-pronged approach. First up is the widespread implementation of a Do Not Track system — for which the W3C is currently creating an international standard — that has already made its way into Internet Explorer , Firefox , and Chrome to make it easy to opt out of targeted ads. Mobile services are also a priority, as the FTC wants concise, meaningful privacy disclosures to make them easy to digest when on smaller screens. Next, the FTC wants consumers to be able to easily find what personal info is held by data brokers, and is pushing those data brokers to create a centralized website to that end. ISPs, social networks, operating systems, and other so-called “large platform providers” are also under scrutiny for their ability to comprehensively track consumers, and the FTC will have a public workshop later this year to “further explore” issues related to that capability. Lastly, the Commission is working with the Department of Commerce to create business sector-specific codes of conduct, and pledges to continue to take action against companies that don’t abide by their own policies. In order to assuage fears that its framework puts too big of a financial burden on small businesses, the FTC made clear that it doesn’t apply to companies that collect data from less than 5,000 customers and don’t share that data with third parties. Sounds like a good plan, fellas, but we won’t get too excited until we see the big boys actually implementing it. FTC wants new privacy framework: asks for simple controls, transparent policies originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink Techmeme | FTC (PDF) | Email this | Comments

 

What’s new for designers, March 2012

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The February edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, frameworks, jQuery plugins, icons, productivity tools, responsive design resources, and some really great new fonts. Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there. As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration. Osmosis Osmosis is a simple app for managing your client questionnaires in a way that makes it easier to interact with your clients and gather the information you need from them. It’s made to fit into your workflow while still being easy to use for your clients. MockVault MockVault is a web app for getting approval from clients for your designs. It guides them through the design you’ve created, making it easier for them to review and approve. Trajectory Trajectory is a new app for managing software projects. It makes it easy to write user stories, track bugs and to-dos, while also facilitating discussion. The Responsinator The Responsinator lets you test any live website for responsiveness on a variety of mobile devices, including tablets and e-readers. All you have to do is enter a URL. Font Awesome Font Awesome is an icon font designed specifically for use with Twitter Bootstrap. It includes over 150 icons, is free for commercial use, offers infinite scalability, and is screen reader compatible. TOC Need a table of contents for your website? TOC is a jQuery plugin that does just that. It’s completely customizable, automatically highlights the current section, and is extremely lightweight. Simple Green SimpleGreen is an icon pack for sustainable businesses. The free version includes 48 environment and social icons, while the paid version includes 200 icons. Codiqa Codiqa is a tool for rapidly creating mobile app prototypes. It’s drag-and-drop jQuery interface makes it quick and easy to build what you need, and it also includes tools for sharing those prototypes. Iubenda Iubenda lets you quickly and easily generate a privacy policy for your website. Just add services, insert the owner, embed the policy, and show the result. Curtain.js Curtain.js is a plugin for creating a web page with multiple fixed panels that unroll with a curtain-rising effect. Navigation is done via keyboard, scrollbar, or your mousewheel. Wonderflux Wonderflux is a new free WordPress theme framework that lets you rapidly create WP themes. It’s licensed under the GPLv2, so you can use it on unlimited client, personal, and commercial sites. Centratissimo Centratissimo is an all-centered, auto-resizable layout. It includes smooth scrolling between pages and dynamic resizing, along with some other neat features, all done with jQuery. Turn.js Turn.js is a jQuery plugin for creating page-turning transitions with HTML5. It uses hardware acceleration, works on tablets and smartphones, is lightweight (only 6K), and is easy to manipulate. jQuery Org Chart jQuery Org Chart is a plugin that lets you render tree-like structures with nested elements. Data is entered in a nested unordered list, making it incredibly easy to use. bgStretcher II bgStretcher is a jQuery plugin for adding a full-page background image that proportionally resizes to fill the entire window area. It’s unobtrusive and simple to setup, and works with all modern browsers. Hogan.js Hogan.js is a JavaScript templating engine developed by Twitter. It’s only 2.5K, and was developed against the mustache test suite (so all the specs for that hold true for Hogan.js). Entypo Entypo is a set of more than a hundred pictograms, available as an OpenType font, a web font, and vector EPS. It’s Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licensed, so you can use it on personal and commercial projects. Prefix Free Prefix Free processes your code to add the current browser’s prefix to any CSS code, so you can use only un-prefixed CSS properties in your code. It works in IE9+, Opera 10+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, and Chrome. Zoomooz Zoomooz is a jQuery plugin for making any element on your website zoomable. It’s supported by all modern browsers and has detailed settings options. Underscore.js Underscore.js is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that gives you a lot of the functional support you’d expect from Ruby or Prototype.js without extending any of the built-in JavaScript objects. It provides over sixty functions that support the usual functional suspects, including map, select, invoke, as well as more specialized ones. Socialico Socialico is a set of 74 social media icons, combined with a single weight font. Lowercase letters show the icons in a circle, while the capital letters of the same alphabet show the icons without the circle. Warm Framework The Warp Framework provides a set of tools for developing cross-platform themes. It currently supports Joomla and WordPress, and can be extended to work with other systems. It makes it possible to create themes that are easily portable between supported systems while retaining all features. Glisse.js Glisse.js is a responsive and customizable jQuery photo viewer. Transitions between images are entirely assumed by CSS3. Collusion Collusion is a Firefox add-on that lets you see all the third parties that are tracking your movements online. In real time, it shows how that data creates a spiderweb of interaction. Cyfe Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard that lets you see an overview of your entire business in real time. View data from Google Analytics, Salesforce, AdSense, MailChimp, Amazon, Facebook, WordPress, Zendesk, Twitter, and more from a single location! jQuery HTML5 Placeholder Plugin This jQuery HTML5 Placeholder Plugin adds cross-browser support for the HTML5 placeholder attribute functionality via jQuery. It has a couple of customization options and usage is very straightforward. FanMix FanMix is a “social inbox” that lets you manage all of your conversations online from a single inbox, just like email. Probably the most useful feature is the ability to search across your entire social history. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Lightroom 4 was just released and includes some great new features. It includes new adjustment controls to maximize dynamic range from cameras, as well as new and improved auto adjustments. The upgrade is $79, while the full version is $149. Geared (name your price) Geared is a distressed slab serif typeface with a style reminiscent of athletic t-shirts. It comes with four unique weights: thin, regular, bold, and extrabold. Abraham Lincoln (name your price) Abraham Lincoln has perhaps the best tagline of any typeface: “Tall. Skinny. Honest.” It was inspired by the proportions of its namesake and the advertisements and playbills of the 1800s. Sedgwick Co (free) Sedgwick Co is an uppercase slab serif typeface inspired by the city of Wichita, KS. It’s both classic and modern, and reminscent of western-style fonts. Web Serveroff (free) Web Serveroff is a modern, condensed sans serif typeface. It comes in both regular and italic styles. Kommisar ($16.25) Kommisar is loosely based on the Trajan capital in Rome and influenced by Father Edward Catich, an American sign painter and lettering artist. It’s contemporary, but with a decidedly antiquarian look. Yeti ($5) Yeti is a display typeface, hand-drawn with a hint of calligraphy. It supports multiple languages and even comes with some graphics and web icons. Intro (free) Intro is a free geometric font from FontFabric. The letterforms are mostly created based on simple geometric shapes — triangles, circles, and squares. Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman . Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments! How to learn iOS Programming – 55% Off! Source

 

EU: Google's new privacy policy breaches European law

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Remember how proud Google was when it unified all of its services under a single privacy policy? Well, Big G’s excitement was tempered when the EU asked it to hold off on the policy’s implementation while it investigated the changes. And its enthusiasm is likely all but extinguished now that EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has declared the policy to be in breach of European law. She found fault with the fact that the EU wasn’t consulted in the policy’s formation, the policy doesn’t meet transparency requirements, and it allows Google to give people’s private data to third parties. No word on what Europa’s governing body will do with such findings in hand, but it seems certain that the crew in Mountain View’s got some policy revisions to make. Guess simplifying those privacy policies wasn’t so simple, was it? EU: Google’s new privacy policy breaches European law originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Reuters | Email this | Comments

 

White House gets behind online 'bill of rights,' companies to adopt 'do not track'

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President Obama is throwing his weight behind a consumer bill of rights that includes protections against online companies in particular, and aims to safeguard customer privacy . While the plan doesn’t come prepackaged with a new set of laws for companies to abide by, the Commerce Department is working to develop enforceable policies with help from the concerned parties. The bedrock of the new bill of rights is that consumers should have control over the kind of data companies collect and what they do with it. Internet firms would have to be transparent about what information is gathered and how it’s used. There is also a call for limitations on the use of certain personal data. As part of the push a number of major players in the field, including Google, have agreed to include a ” Do Not Track ” button in their browsers and to honor the system — the latter being a tiny detail that has made implementations of the feature ineffective until now. Hit up the source links for a few more details. White House gets behind online ‘bill of rights,’ companies to adopt ‘do not track’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Reuters , Wall Street Journal | Email this | Comments

 

Last chance to clear out Google Web History before the great data convergence

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The end is nigh! For about 59 different Google ToS documents at least. After today, the new consolidated privacy policy will go into effect, which will also consolidate much of your data across Google’s properties. That means this is your last chance to clear out El Goog’s “you archives” before the great convergence of 2012. If you’re not keen on Google sharing your information between its various products (though, you seemed to be okay with it being collected in the first place) today is the day to go and delete it all. Of particular concern for some is Web History, which collects your searches and sites visited and has, until now, been walled off from the rest of the Google empire. For complete instructions for how to clear out your Google Web History hit up the source link. Last chance to clear out Google Web History before the great data convergence originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink Slashdot , IT World | EFF | Email this | Comments

 

PlayStation Network moniker sacked, falls under Sony Entertainment Network umbrella on Feb. 7

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Listen up, those of you with PlayStation Network IDs. Sony Computer Entertainment International has announced that, as of February 7th, the PSN will fold into its existing Sony Entertainment Network . The company has aimed the move at clearly unifying the services of PSN and SEN, such as Music Unlimited . Fret not, however, as Joystiq notes that the change is basically a looks-only affair, meaning your current account information and related services will remain the same. Notably, the moniker refresh won’t apply to the PSP, which will curiously remain under the PSN moniker for network services. The news comes as a part of SCEI’s updated Terms of Service and privacy policy, both of which take effect on the same day. Those changes, by the way, appear to mainly be regarding location-based services for PS Vita, and parental controls for sub-master accounts. After all of the bad times PSN has been through, its upcoming SEN identity might just be the new outlook on (online) life it needed all along — and hopefully with less downtime . Hit up the source link below for the full details. PlayStation Network moniker sacked, falls under Sony Entertainment Network umbrella on Feb. 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Sony | Email this | Comments

 

EU regulators ask Google to 'pause' its privacy changes, need more time to investigate

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Google has gone to great lengths to clarify its revamped privacy policy , but a regulatory body in the European Union thinks the company is moving a little too fast. Today, European regulators formally requested that Google “pause” its rollout, in order to give the EU more time to investigate its forthcoming changes. “Given the wide range of services you offer, and the popularity of these services, changes in your privacy policy may affect many citizens in most or all of the EU member states,” the EU’s Data Protection Working Party wrote in a letter to Google CEO Larry Page yesterday. “We wish to check the possible consequences for the protection of the personal data of these citizens in a coordinated way.” The body didn’t specify how much time it would need to investigate, but it stressed that doing so would help to ensure absolute transparency among European users. “[W]e call for a pause in the interests of ensuring that there can be no misunderstanding about Google’s commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis,” the letter reads. Viviane Reding, Europe’s commissioner on data protection, heralded the move as an important step in asserting EU authority over online privacy and regulations, but Google was somewhat taken aback by the request. “We briefed most of the members of the working party in the weeks leading up to our announcement,” said company spokesman Al Verney. “None of them expressed substantial concerns at the time, but of course we’re happy to speak with any data protection authority that has questions.” It’s worth noting that Google isn’t legally bound to heed the Working Party’s request, though we’d expect the company to seek some sort of compromise with Europe’s regulators, as it has in the past . EU regulators ask Google to ‘pause’ its privacy changes, need more time to investigate originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Reuters | Email this | Comments