The decision was a split one, as first reported by Reuters, with four of the seven justices finding in favor of Apple. A copy of the decision is embedded below.
The proposed class action suit was initially brought against Apple by plaintiff David Krescent in June 2011. Krescent alleged that Apple required his telephone number and address to purchase media downloads.
The majority of the justices … Read more
A coalition of privacy groups has written to leading U.S. politicians to seek assurances that policymakers "advance the aim of privacy" in Europe, rather than hinder the development of new European data protection and privacy laws.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and more than a dozen other groups are seeking to meet with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.S. Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank, to ensure that new European data law proposals are bolstered … Read more
While on assignment for business recently, Jeffrey Paul posted a photo to the social network Path.
For business reasons, he didn't want to tell his contacts where he was at the time. He had already disabled Path's access to his location in iOS settings. After he took his photo, he had carefully cropped it to obscure anything that might have identified his location.
But when he hit publish, there it was: the name of the city he was in. He deleted the post immediately, but the disclosure shook him. In a subsequent post on his company's blog, … Read more
Jon Leibowitz announced today that he is resigning from his post as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. His announcement comes after presiding over both the investigation and settlement of Google's antitrust probe.
Leibowitz plans to leave his position by mid-February, according to The New York Times.
"I felt like this was a good time to leave because we got through a number of things that I wanted the commission to address," he told the newspaper.
President Obama appointed Leibowitz, who was formerly an FTC commissioner, to lead the agency in 2009. Leibowitz was said to … Read more
Riding on the heels of the recent U.S. lawsuit against Google for Safari tracking, Apple users in the U.K. have now launched their own similar case against the Web giant.
Peeved that their online privacy was violated, roughly a dozen people are suing Google in a class action suit, according to The Guardian. The case alleges that Google secretly tracked their Internet habits via cookies in the Safari Web browser. The lawsuit revolves around the way Google may have sidestepped Apple's security settings on the iPhone, iPad, and desktop versions of Safari.
"This is the first … Read more
Facebook is going on the defensive with an explanatory new blog post and video that attempt to assuage privacy concerns around Graph Search, the company's beta search tool for uncovering people, places, photos, and interests that have been buried alive inside the social network.
Graph Search, launched in beta about two weeks ago, offers Facebook users a new way to discover information on the social network, but it also exposes a copious amount of personal data that members may not realize is available for public scrutiny. "Actual Facebook Graph Searches," a one-day Tumblr experiment, exposed the tell-all … Read more
One of the world's most popular cross-platform applications "violates" international privacy laws, according to the Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities, because it requires users to provide their entire contact list to the service.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Dutch Data Protection Authority today announced their findings for what they called a "collaborative investigation into the handling of personal information" by the California-based company.
WhatsApp, an instant messenger application for iPhone, Android devices, and BlackBerry smartphones, provides a free service to rival text messaging, and sends more than 1 billion … Read more
Unhappy with Facebook privacy settings? There's an app for that, according to Facebook.
The social network has launched a new app that lets users send privacy concerns and questions to Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan.
The "Ask Erin" app -- essentially a comment form on its "Facebook and Privacy" page -- went live last night, but Egan officially unveiled it at a data privacy event in Washington, D.C., this morning. Egan is one of two chief privacy officers at Facebook. She covers policy while CPO Michael Richter focuses on the actual features Facebook … Read more
Friday's CNET Update is looking so Vine:
Today's tech news roundup looks at the latest skirmish between Facebook and Twitter. The new iPhone app Vine (owned by Twitter), lets users create six-second mash-up videos and share it on social media. But Facebook has blocked Vine from being able to find Facebook friends in the app. The move is similar to how Twitter shut off Facebook's Instagram from accessing its user data.
As the world is still learning what a Vine is, take a look at CNET's tips for using the app. Keep in mind that although … Read more
Yesterday Twitter launched a new video sharing app called Vine. The service lets you compose and share six-second videos using its iPhone app. As Sharon Vaknin pointed out, currently there's no way to set any of your videos, or even your profile, to "private." Any videos you upload are going to be public; viewable by anyone using the service.
There is a way to create a video using the Vine app and share it privately, however. It's not an ideal workaround (that would be privacy settings in the app) but it's an easy way … Read more
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