No way anybody's going to abandon privacy policies anytime soon – not with the FTC's and others' calls for ever greater disclosure of mobile and Web services' privacy practices (e.g., see this). But no one reads them – even if they could get through all the legal verbiage without nodding off. Knowing this, Mozilla, the people who brought you the Firefox Web browser, and some privacy advocates … [Read more...] about Privacy policies made palatable (or at least digestible)!
Privacy
Private vs. public parenting (& a Pew study)
Did you know that we parents are pretty darn engaged with the young social media users at our houses? To our credit, I feel, most of us are folding social media into our parenting, the Pew Internet researchers report. For example – although high school student Jake tells his friend that he's "probably the only kid in the world with their mom on Facebook" in this engaging YouTube dramatization by … [Read more...] about Private vs. public parenting (& a Pew study)
Facebook’s privacy primer for new users
Hey, kids, if you want to get parents, grandparents, or aunts and uncles on Facebook, now's a better time than ever. FB now has a privacy primer for people who are signing up for the first time. "We’ve implemented these enhancements as part of our broader effort to integrate more privacy education into the new user experience," it says in Facebook's blog, acknowledging the "guidance on this … [Read more...] about Facebook’s privacy primer for new users
Facebook ‘privacy breach’: Misperception-cum-meme?
The "news" that people's private Facebook messages were appearing on their "walls" spread like wildfire earlier this week, but Slate reports that it's more meme than news. It all started in France, where users complained about finding private messages posted between 2007 and '09 on their profiles pages, but news outlets reported that "the issue is not systematic and affects only certain accounts." … [Read more...] about Facebook ‘privacy breach’: Misperception-cum-meme?
The ‘minimum age’ & other unintended consequences of COPPA
It's tough to be the FTC – or anyone else trying to make rules for user-driven (social) media. It's hard enough to make static rules address fast-changing technology. Then there's the problem of changing understanding of consumers – the intended beneficiaries of the rules and the users of user-driven media – as we all adjust to having the data that represents so much of our everyday lives in a … [Read more...] about The ‘minimum age’ & other unintended consequences of COPPA