Privacy Takes Center Stage Online - Comparing Privacy Approaches
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Thanks to a recent report from the Center for Democracy and Technology, we now know the privacy practices for the five major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask) and can compare them side by side. I wrote about this report in mid-August, and you can read more about it here. In some ways, Google has the worst privacy policy of all. The search engine retails the IP address and cookie ID for a query for 18 months, and may only partially delete the data after that time. Contrast that with Yahoo's policy, under which it retains such information for only 12 months, or Ask's special AskEraser, a tool that lets users completely delete such data within a few hours.
Facebook's approach represents a move from an opt-in to an opt-out model, as Danny Sullivan observed. Search engines have already indexed about 25,000 Facebook profiles. That's less than a fraction of a percent of all the network's profiles. And the company is actually being pretty cautious about this change; it has notified its users well in advance. This should give Facebook members enough time to change their privacy settings.
David Berkowitz, writing for Media Post Publications, explained how Facebook's settings work. "First, Facebook members can control who can find their profiles within the site - friends, people in shared networks, or everyone. Only if 'everyone' is selected will Facebook provide members with the option of allowing others to see their public search listings. If that option is checked, members can then allow public listings to be indexed by search engines. If you're on Facebook, this is all available under the Privacy Settings for Search," he pointed out.
How does this measure up against privacy protections offered by other online social networks? Pretty well, actually. Google's Orkut lets members control only whether their profile changes are visible to friends and whether friends can see who visits each others' home pages. MySpace gives users limited control over who views their profile (they can restrict it to members 18 or older, for instance), and can block individual users. Yahoo 360 offers similarly limited controls. LinkedIn is on a par with Facebook, and may stand to benefit if enough people are unhappy with Facebook's latest change.
It's worth keeping in mind that this data covers the main services of search engines and online social networks. If you think Google's Internet search holds information too long, you might want to take a look at Google Street View. At least one closet smoker has been caught - twice - on the service, and apparently felt forced to give up the habit. The service provides users with a close look at city streets in the United States. Unfortunately, it often includes identifiable images of people, sometimes doing potentially embarrassing things (like smoking or walking out of an adult bookstore). People caught on camera can request that the images be removed, but there's no way to know whether you were captured unless you look.
This was enough to convince Canada's privacy minister to warn Google that the service may be illegal in that country. Federal Privacy Minister Jennifer Stoddart sent the search engine a letter explaining the law, and that her office "considers images of individuals that are sufficiently clear to allow an individual to be identified to be personal information" that falls under the country's privacy. This law forbids the commercial use of personal data without permission from the individual, and Stoddart noted in the letter that the images in Google Street View "appear to have been collected largely without the consent and knowledge of the individuals who appear in the images." Google Street View is not currently available in Canada, and it is not known whether Google was planning to expand the service to that country.
Next: What Privacy Means to You >>
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