privacy

What's YoName?

Is googling your best friend from preschool going nowhere? If you suspect that he might be lurking on a social-networking site, you can try to find him with YoName, a people-search engine that looks across MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, Friendster, Match, and Xanga.

There are other social-site crawlers, such as Upscoop beta, which shows who in your Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, or AOL address book uses MySpace, LinkedIn, or other sites. There's a lot of buzz already around the unreleased Spock people finder. Loopster and ProfileLinker beta sift through various networks and let you see when friends update their pages. … Read more

Your Web history, courtesy of Google

Google's announced acquisition of DoubleClick has raised considerable concern among privacy advocates, who argue that combining the search engine giant with a major online advertising firm puts too much information in the hands of one company.

The launch of Google's new Web History product should send those fears into overdrive.

The new service allows you to search and view your entire online life, including which pages you visited and when. Google will also analyze your online travels, revealing which sites you visit most frequently and what your top searches are.

The data is available only when you log … Read more

Keep the sun, and prying eyes, off your laptop screen

Putting one of these laptop shades on your computer might make it look like an old-school microfiche reader from the mustiest corner of your local public library, but I think it could actually serve a useful purpose. Any laptop owner knows that toting your Vaio or MacBook outside is borderline impossible because the glare from the sun renders the screen unreadable. This add-on, called CompuShade, attaches to the top of your laptop and can be unfolded when you're outside and want to block the glare out.

Plus, it can keep people from snooping! So not only can you take … Read more

Facebook creates online focus group for new features

Facebook has a new group called Facebook Sneak Preview that is the social-networking equivalent of a focus group. The Facebook team will be showing off screenshots of upcoming Facebook features to get feedback to potentially avoid another user backlash like the one that came with the news feed privacy hullabaloo of 2006.

Right now there are three screenshots showcasing an updated layout with less clutter and more commonly used navigation put in the right places. One change in particular shows the networks selection option and the message in-box in a tabbed menu bar at the top of the screen. Normally if you're a member of multiple networks, you have to select between them halfway down your profile. Putting that and your message in-box on the top is just a good idea. There are other little tweaks, but it's good to see them taking an active approach to making the site more user-friendly.

Not new--but cool nonetheless--is the option to comment on each screenshot, allowing users to add their opinions on the changes. The same goes for a general forum on the main page of the group, which is currently being moderated by Facebook staff to keep conversation on-topic. We've got all three screens below.

[via Facebook Blog]… Read more

Keep snoops from watching your iPod

As this item comes from our cousins across the pond, we're tempted to make a snide remark about prim-and-proper Brits--but then they'd retaliate, and we'd lose. So we'll just note blandly that Crave UK has found an privacy screen (pronounced with a short "i") from iStyles for the iPod, which shields the display against prying eyes while riding the tube or in other congested venues.

Japanese subway riders have had a similar product for awhile now, but it makes sense that the idea would arise in their country first. After all, no one knows … Read more

News Roundup: March Madness on YouTube, Google privacy, and SkypeFind

NCAA tournament clips on YouTube. Just because Viacom has gone lawsuit-happy with YouTube, that doesn't mean CBS wants to keep its content off Google's video-hosting service. CBS will be adding highlights, press conferences and specials available "immediately" following live TV coverage. YouTube users will also be able to vote on and rank their favorite game clips.

Google adding search privacy protections. Google will be "anonymizing" search queries connected to your IP address and browser cookies about 18 to 24 months after they were created. Currently, all three pieces of information are grouped together and … Read more

Unofficial Child Surveillance Day: IMSafer and MySpace upgrade

-- IMSafer, the parental IM monitoring system we covered in October, got a big upgrade today with support for Mac OS X and Windows Vista. The app keeps an eye on your child's (or spouse's!) instant messages, and alerts you via e-mail if the analysis tool finds inappropriate content. Previously, there was no Mac support.

-- MySpace is planning to launch an app that lets curious parents or significant others track MySpace log-ins on the family computer. Code-named "Zephyr," the app will make note of username, age, and location, then save the data to your machine. … Read more