Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Detailed Privacy Study Finds Loopholes Galore

Posted by kdawson on from the get-over-it dept.

BrianWCarver writes "The San Francisco Business Times covers a study by student researchers at UC Berkeley's School of Information pointing up the massive holes in privacy policies and protections of which US companies take advantage. The researchers have released a study and launched a Web site, knowprivacy.org, in which they found that Web bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were placed on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of the approximately 394,000 unique domains examined in the study. This larger data set was provided by the maintainer of the Firefox plugin Ghostery, which shows users which Web bugs are on the sites they visit. The study also found that while the privacy policies of many popular Web sites claim that the sites do not share information with third parties, they do allow third parties to place Web bugs on their sites (which collect this information directly, typically without users' knowledge) and share with corporate 'affiliates.' Bank of America, to take one extreme example, has more than 2,300 affiliates — and users cannot learn their identities. The full report and more findings are available from their Web site."

8 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Guilty as charged by alain94040 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Agreed. Trackers such as Google Analytics and more have been around for years. But now it's getting even worse with the flurry of URL shorteners. Not only can't you see what the real URL points to, its main purpose is to track, track, track.

    Personally, I don't believe it makes sense to have a web completely free of "web bugs". I'd rather have some pretty strong laws, along the lines of the presumption of innocence, so that anything collected about you can't possibly be used against you if it was obtained "by chance". That would be a start.

    --
    escape the corporate world, code for fun and profit

    1. Re:Guilty as charged by orngjce223 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Here's the thing. People don't *want* to be tracked across websites. (Just like they don't *want* to see ads at all... but I digress.) The equivalent is the local store providing a small button-sticker, without your permission, at the door that not only lets their associates direct you to sections you might actually be interested in, but track you via GPS into other stores to see what you buy. And I mean you can take them off later (delete the cookies and all that), but then every other store provides the exact same sticker and some require you to present the sticker at every counter for service. It's something that a paranoid would probably say already happens, but the fact is, that this is turning us *all* paranoid. I don't like being paranoid.

      On the other hand, Mr. President Obama has kept quiet on privacy, so we don't even know what his stances are on this issue...

      --
      Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
    2. Re:Guilty as charged by lavacano201014 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, it's one thing if they stick a cookie on your computer saying "He logs in as lavacano201014, and he gets the password right", or "I've been here before, don't count me as a new visitor". It's like those events where they stamp your hand to show "You've paid, you just went outside for a smoke". It's another thing if they record personal information that you'd rather keep to yourself. It's like forcing them to tattoo your name and Social Security Number to your forehead and both arms. Do you really wanna wander around with "I'm John Johnson, my SSN is 555-55-5555"? That's my stance. Of course, if you really DO want to wander around like that, none of my business.

      --
      A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
    3. Re:Guilty as charged by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You do realize this already happens right? And stupid people play into it. Those retarded 'club' cards for every freaking grocery store, sporting goods store, (insert store type here) store. The price you see on the label is always the 'club' price, which you pay more if you don't use their 'club' card. They send you directed advertisements in the mail and design the store displays and advertisements to direct you to the place in the store where they think they can upsell you the most.

      The only people turning paranoid are geeks too stupid to realize they have been able to do this for years and it doesn't just happen on the Internet. 'Web bugs' are nothing new, you've just been too dumb to notice them in the past.

      'People' don't CARE if they are tracked. Slashdotters freak out about it. If people gave a damn they wouldn't be so happy to sign up for those cards. They KNOW they are being tracked cause most of them happily send you reports regularly telling you what you've spent your money on.

      You guys need to pull your eyes off the monitor for a few minutes and stop thinking that everything on the Internet is new. Most of it isn't, not be a long shot, its just a variation on some scam from else where.

      If you actually were worried about being tracked you'd use cash and never buy anything off the Internet.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  2. Defective by design by Torodung · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The law: this is the thing that really deserves this tag.

    Defective by design, my friends. You have no privacy from the powerful.

    --
    Toro

  3. This is new?! by erroneus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ADVERTISERS are Anti-Privacy People!!! They would create massive databases tracking every single man woman and child on the planet if they could and many are still working on that very thing.

    Google is an advertiser. When you break it down, Google's motivation is making money by selling advertisements in various forms and means.

    Here's other news: Advertising WORKS!!! They wouldn't do all this if it didn't yield results. And that will never change. Our consumer culture is so developed that people can't imagine any other way of seeing the world they live in.

    And here's an interesting aside -- according to my younger brother who recently went through law enforcement training informed the family of an interesting bit of trivia. He told us that the code word for "mentally retarded person" is "CONSUMER." He was not joking. Let that settle in... There are so many different areas where "consumer" is used to describe people and it makes you think doesn't it? We're all the brainless pawns in their business strategies and plans.

  4. Re:...and so what? by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is this an invasion of privacy? I don't think so.

    See, the problem is that my privacy is none of your business. I don't care what you think is acceptable to me. Speak for yourself.

    If a surfer visits your site, they have a certain expectation of viewing your content. Now you've decided to share that two-way communication with a hidden third party, who offers you a service (so far so good) in exchange for access to the visitors (that's the problem). Your visitors have not entered into any relationship with the third party, and are not getting any service from them. So why are you letting them get milked?

    Think of it this way: Do you carry a hidden tape recorder in your pocket so that you can record all your conversations with your friends and colleagues, just because the weird guy down the street is paying you 10 bucks a week to let him listen in on anything he likes? Would you consider that acceptable behaviour from any of your friends and colleagues?

  5. Re:Privacy is Possible by twostix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Do people have a right to complain if they aren't willing to lift a finger to protect themselves?"

    Why yes, yes they do.