Real life privacy is an easy thing to understand. Don’t peek into my windows! Don’t put up surveillance cameras on every corner! Don’t tap my phone calls! But what about online privacy? What should the government (ahem, NSA) be able to know about us? How much data should companies give them? And just how the heck did we get here with online privacy?
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Facebook has over 1 billion users of all ages from all around the world. The social network is quite popular with teens, despite recent reports claiming that teenagers are now bored of Facebook. Privacy on the network as well as off it has always been a concern, and Facebook’s rather complex privacy settings aren’t exactly easy for everyone to figure out. In a bid to make user’s lives and data more private on Facebook and on the internet in general, the social network has teamed up with the National Association of Attorney Generals to educate their teen users and their parents how privacy online can effectively be managed.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says that they hope to “ensure that young people make safe, smart and responsible choices online.” Starting tomorrow, 19 different state attorney generals and Sheryl will release a public service announcement for the respective states, along with a video called “What you can Do to Control Your Information.” The names of these 19 states haven’t been divulged, but it is said that more states will be coming on board in the near future.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Malware Infected Results In Search Five Times More Common From Bing Than Google, Greenland Kicks The Pirate Bay Out After Just Two Days, 
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Google’s legal director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, is set to testify before the US House of Representatives this morning about the need for new email privacy legislation. In his written testimony, Salgado notes that the 1986 ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) doesn’t reflect the internet circa 2013, noting how cloud computing has increased the amount of user information shared and stored online.
Salgado’s prepared statement calls for updates to ECPA that allow for greater privacy measures, while also ensuring that government agencies can obtain access to documents when necessary. He points to the ECPA’s policy on government requests to view users’ email — only a subpoena is required for email 180 days or older, but viewing newer communication requires a search warrant — as an example of the law’s “inconsistent, confusing and uncertain standards.” Google wants to alter the ECPA to require search warrants to access any user data stored online, regardless of their age. Salgado’s testimony also touches on Mountain View’s own efforts to improve transparency when it comes to user privacy, including publishing reports about government requests. Read the statement in full via the source link below.
Source: Google Public Policy blog
Facebook’s Recommendations Box sits passively on many websites, allowing us to engage or ignore as we see fit. But too much of the latter option has led to something slightly different: the new Recommendations Bar — a pop-up variant which, when integrated by your favorite page, plugs site-specific links based on your friends’ thumbs and shares. The Bar is similar to the in-house recommendation pop-ups we’re all familiar with, but adds a like button for posting the current page to your timeline. It shouts much louder than the Box, so it’s no surprise that in early tests the new plug-in produced a three-fold increase in click-throughs. In this case, privacy wasn’t an afterthought — Bar integration, like the Box, is at the site’s discretion and sharing pages is very much on your terms. Just try not to accidently hit that like button during your daily scan of Bieber’s homepage.
Filed under: Internet
Facebook’s new Recommendations Bar pops up, just wants to be liked originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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