Less than a month after photo social network Instagram caught huge flak over advertiser-friendly changes to its privacy policy (and claimed it was misunderstood), another social network, the location check-in service Foursquare, has announced revenue-friendly changes to its privacy policy.
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The site, which began as an exclusively student-based network, still has more privacy controls than other sites.
So social ads are the next frontier for privacy and the tense user-social network relationship.
Could this be a game-changing privacy feature for the first social network to adopt such a policy?
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Carnegie Mellon University conducted a study following more than 5, 000 Facebook users over six years, from 2005 and 2011, and found that changes in the social network's privacy policies caused users to share more -- not less -- personal data.
Internet companies must balance their self-interest in maintaining a secure network with law enforcement's occasionally heavy-handed demands, while keeping their customers' privacy in mind.
The U.S. government today announced that it would permit Network Associates Inc. a license allowing it to ship its 128-bit PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) product to a large number of countries, excluding countries such as Iraq and Cuba.
Marc Groman, Executive Director of self-regulatory online advertising coalition Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), tackles the centralized issue of Internet privacy on the online behavioral advertising (OBA) side.
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Lounging outside near one of the seventeen "data toilet" portapotties that housed the network routers, Andy Muller-Maguhn said the camp reflected a cultural movement concerned with data security, privacy and the free flow of information.
Lest you think this means that users suddenly trusted the site more, Carnegie Mellon says that Facebookers became more and more protective of their personal details as the social network grew in membership -- and that the uptick in shared information is a result of increasingly granular privacy settings.
The privacy vigilantes now have in their sights an airline-passenger screening system and an interstate network to share law-enforcement and intelligence information.
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To spice things up, the Senate Committee invited Facebook to join the grill-out, giving one privacy advocate from Common Sense Media the opportunity to make fun of the social network for its recent failed PR attack on its co-testifier.
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