Security

As the World Trade Center and Pentagon were ablaze on September 11, 2001, the U.S. Secret Service's presidential protective detail was informed that a "Korean airliner has been hijacked" en route to San Francisco, prompting already-skittish agents to worry about another wave of terrorist attacks.

That morning and afternoon, Secret Service agents assigned to protect the president and his family found their pagers constantly buzzing with alerts both true and false. There was a false alarm about a car bomb in downtown Washington, D.C., a report of "two Arab males detained" after asking for directions to the presidential retreat at Camp David, and reassurances that "Twinkle and Turq"--code names for the Bush daughters--were safe and accounted for.

This unusual glimpse into the events of 9/11 comes from messages sent to alphanumeric pagers that were anonymously published on the Internet on Wednesday, via WikiLeaks.org....

Read the full story of "Egads! Confidential 9/11 Pager Messages Disclosed at CBSNews.com.

Facebook on Tuesday announced that it has decided to adopt a revised privacy policy designed to be more accessible and easier to understand.

The social network had just completed a weeklong comment period for the new revision and, though "a lot of people participated," less than 7,000 members commented. According to Facebook's rules, this meant that a vote was unnecessary, Michael Richter, Facebook deputy general counsel, wrote in a company blog.

Overall, members supported the proposed changes, including the simplification of the language used to describe the policy and the document's new structure, Richter said.

The site also plans to add visual resources designed to make the document more accessible, such as a glossary of important terms and informational "learn more" videos. Facebook expects to post the revision in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish soon.

The revision is the latest chapter in Facebook's privacy saga. In July, an investigation by Canada's privacy commissioner suggested that Facebook is unconcerned with members' privacy and called on it to do more. Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart expressed concern that while it's easy for members to deactivate their accounts, the process of actually deleting them is less clear. Facebook could therefore retain member data from deactivated accounts for an indefinite period of time, in violation of Canadian privacy law.

The social network went through a user backlash over the introduction of its News Feed in 2006, and a bigger one over the controversial Beacon advertising program in 2007. More recently, a revision to Facebook's terms of use prompted consumer advocacy blog The Consumerist to highlight language that it said meant that Facebook claimed ownership of user profile data and photos.

Updated November 18 at 11:19 a.m. PST to clarify that the data was sold by workers at T-Mobile UK, which is operated separately from T-Mobile USA.

British Information Commissioner Christopher Graham says penalties aren't strong enough to deter the sale of private consumer data.

(Credit: BBC)

T-Mobile workers sold personal data on thousands of customers to third parties who then called the individuals as their wireless contracts were due to expire, a T-Mobile UK spokesman has confirmed.

T-Mobile notified England's Information Commission, the watchdog agency responsible for safeguarding consumer privacy, and said the activity was done "without our knowledge," according to the BBC.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told the news agency his office will prosecute the individuals responsible.

It's the latest black eye for the T-Mobile brand in recent months. (T-Mobile UK and T-Mobile USA are operated separately.)

Last month an outage with T-Mobile USA network left Sidekick users unable to access the Web or their address books for several days.

And earlier this month T-Mobile's network in the U.S. suffered a major outage that left customers unable to send or receive text messages and access voice messages for part of a day. The outage was due to a software error in the back end system that generated abnormal congestion on the network, the company said in a statement.

Google's biggest threat is no longer Microsoft. It is itself.

As the company harvests copious quantities of personal data, it becomes dramatically better at serving customer needs...

...and at freaking them out over privacy concerns.

In other words, Google gets stronger with every Google Doc created, every Google Voice call dialed, and every Gmail e-mail sent. It becomes stronger because data is the heart of the Web's biggest businesses, as Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady implies.

But in so doing Google also becomes more threatening to the very consumers it is trying to serve.

Google Dashboard is meant to change this by putting consumer data back in the hands of consumers. It's a move that follows on Google's earlier pledge to "open data" and its Data Liberation Front.

Yes, but will he give me better search?

(Credit: U.S. Army)

As CNET reports, Dashboard lets people review the personal data Google has stored for them, delete it, and alter future collection policies. It's a great way for Google to mollify concerned users, putting control back in their hands.

Still, it's almost certainly never going to be used by the vast majority of Google users. Ever.

Why? Because for all our hand-wringing over privacy--and for good reason--the reality is that most of us, most of the time, really don't care. Or, rather, if accessing useful services or getting work done more efficiently requires some privacy concessions, we gladly concede.

It's not that we don't value our privacy. It's just that in many contexts, we value other things as much or more. We weigh the risks versus the benefits, and often the benefits trump the privacy risks.

It's the same thing with file formats. For years we've been agonizing over Microsoft's lock-in of customers through proprietary file formats (.pst, .doc, etc.). Now Microsoft is opening up the specifications for file formats like .pst (Outlook file format), and yet it will almost certainly change little to nothing in what products most people use most of the time.

People don't use Microsoft Office because they're forced to. They do so because it's convenient. (Yes, an argument can be made that it's convenient because Microsoft has forced network effects through lock-in.)

This, incidentally, is exactly the reason that Wednesday night I declared a ban on Microsoft Office in our family in favor of Google Docs--and didn't opt for OpenOffice (which we also use). I got sick of having to recover documents and perform other IT tasks related to a locally installed office suite, open source or proprietary. And I find it easier to let Google handle the back-end IT operations.

I wasn't trying to evade lock-in. I was trying to increase personal happiness.

Am I concerned about Google snooping on the documents we write and store in Google Docs? Let's just say I worry more about my time fixing Office than whether Google gleans any information from my 12-year old's seventh-grade essay.

Dashboard leaves Google in the prime position of being able to honestly say that it doesn't control user data, while still delivering increasingly beneficial services based on that data. It will not change the way that the vast majority of consumers use Google, but it just might change the way they think about Google.

A very smart move by Google, one that all data-driven businesses should emulate.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Harriet Pearson, chief privacy officer, IBM

(Credit: IBM)

Harriet Pearson once joined a petition signed by Facebook users, urging the social-networking site to do more in terms of privacy.

But the privacy expert considers herself a moderate when it comes to protecting her personal information.

Pearson, IBM's chief privacy officer for the past nine years and also its security counsel since last year, says each person needs a mental model to assess the benefits or risks associated with providing personal data. In the same way, she said, governments ought to be thoughtful when drafting policies and laws on data protection.

In town recently for Singapore's annual GovernmentWare conference, Pearson sat down with ZDNet Asia to discuss data protection legislation, the need for a balanced view regarding data breach notification, and why Asian regulators should not "photocopy" European law books.

Read more of "Asia's lawmakers need not copy Europe" at ZDNet Asia.

eBay is the most trusted company in terms of privacy, and Yahoo and Facebook are among the Top 10, according to a new report released on Wednesday.

Following eBay is Verizon, the U.S. Postal Service, WebMD, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Nationwide and Intuit, with Yahoo and Facebook in the ninth and tenth spots, the study from the Ponemon Institute and Truste says.

Here are the list of the most trusted companies in privacy, according to a study by the Ponemon Institute and Truste.

(Credit: Ponemon Institute/Truste)

It was Facebook's debut on the list, as well as the first time a telecommunications company and a government operation cracked the top three.

While the list ranks the most trusted companies based on consumer brand perception it doesn't necessarily translate to the list of the most trustworthy companies, Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CNET News.

"They really ought to do one ranking for the poll and a separate one for the actual privacy evaluation," Bankston wrote on Facebook. "Blending them together makes these rankings rather useless."

Basically, privacy practices were analyzed and ranked only for a list of 23 companies that were highly rated in a survey of more than 6,000 U.S. consumers earlier this year, according to Truste spokeswoman Carolyn Hodge. The Top 20 from that survey were analyzed and that included 23 companies because of several ties, she said.

So, the latest study most accurately reflects which companies were deemed to have the best privacy practices among a list of companies that consumers perceive as being trustworthy.

"It absolutely is based on consumers' perception of specific brands. That's what we're trying to get at," Hodge said. "The idea behind this research is to promote consumer education about privacy and to promote adoption of best practices by companies...We understand consumers are probably going to name companies they trust and there may not be a clear correlation with privacy."

Regardless, Hodge and Larry Ponemon, founder of the institute that bears his name, said the companies on the list deserved recognition.

"None of these companies is doing badly at privacy," said Hodge. "We're talking about the best companies out there."

"Clearly there can be variance between perception and reality," Ponemon said. But, he noted, Verizon recently adopted a new more consumer-friendly privacy policy, eBay does a good job on data security and Facebook has made great improvements lately on user privacy.

"I'm not a big fan, but what Facebook is is an experiment...they've had issues and come a long way on privacy," he said.

In assessing the level of trustworthiness of the popular brands, Truste staff looked at 40 criteria, Hodges said. The criteria included things like whether a company: has a clear, readability and easy to find privacy statement; provides adequate access to account information; uses cookies and discloses that to users; shares data with other companies and affiliates; has a data retention policy; has a chief privacy officer; whether they disclose a user's e-mail during password reset; and whether they use Web beacons.

In addition, representatives from the Ponemon Institute called companies without identifying themselves and asked questions about privacy practices to see how well their customer service representatives respond to consumer inquiries about that.

Here is the list of the most trusted companies from December 2008.

(Credit: Truste)

A recent simplification of Facebook's user privacy controls wasn't enough for some policymakers.

On Thursday, in conjunction with the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Facebook announced a new set of modifications to its user privacy controls as well as its developer API, and the targets of these changes are the thousands of third-party applications built on Facebook's developer platform. That means there may be major implications for developers--some of whom rely almost exclusively on Facebook activity as a revenue source.

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner's office released a set of recommendations for Facebook last month, specifically highlighting concerns that third-party applications could access a significant amount of users' personal data. "It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a release at the time.

Facebook's newest set of changes will require third-party applications to specify which fields of user data they access (birthdays, favorite music, geographic location, etc.) and will require users to offer explicit permission before an app can access any of their friends' profile data. This is also in tune with recommendations offered earlier this week by a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which highlighted the amount of personal data that third-party apps can access--sometimes without a user knowing it.

"Our productive and constructive dialogue with the Commissioner's office has given us an opportunity to improve our policies and practices in a way that will provide even greater transparency and control for Facebook users," Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of global communications and public policy, said in a release Thursday. "We believe that these changes are not only great for our users and address all of the Commissioners' outstanding concerns, but they also set a new standard for the industry."

But what does it mean for developers? This could make it difficult for some apps--particularly the sillier ones that rely on heavy viral spread and often one-time use--to gain traction and stay effective. These are similar concerns to those that arose when Facebook cracked down on apps that it deemed "spammy" (and often rightfully so). But on the other hand, the new privacy controls could stem off bad press that could easily paint the developer platform as a whole as unsafe or untrustworthy.

"It is important for developers to have access to information, but we want to balance that with transparency and control for users," Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of platform product marketing, said in a blog post geared toward developers.

"We have committed to making these enhancements over the next twelve months, and anticipate a lengthy beta period including opportunities for you to provide input, multiple blog posts, and updated documentation delivered well ahead of time," Beard's post continued. "Understanding that this will likely require modifications to your code base, we want to give you the earliest heads up that these enhancements are on our road map."

The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has put out a campaign designed to raise awareness of the privacy implications of Facebook's developer platform. It's focusing specifically on the popular "quiz" applications, like "Which Cocktail Best Suits Your Personality?" and "Which Wes Anderson Movie Character Are You?" These are largely one-time-use apps that many a Facebook user clicks on and tries out with little concern.

According to the ACLU chapter, "millions of people on Facebook who use third-party applications on the site, including the popular quizzes, do not realize the extent to which developers of quizzes and other applications have access to personal information. Facebook's default privacy settings allow nearly unfettered access to a user's profile information, including religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, photos, events, notes, wall posts, and groups." For the promotion, it's put together a quiz about how much you know about Facebook-based quizzes.

Side note: Creating a Facebook quiz app to draw attention to the pratfalls of Facebook quiz apps is very meta.

"It's time for Facebook to upgrade its privacy controls so that quizzes can only see what people want them to see," Chris Conley, technology and civil liberties fellow at the ACLU of Northern California, said in a release. "Users need stronger protections than Facebook currently provides."

So are the ACLU-NC's claims legitimate? The most damning one asserts that "regardless of whether a user's Facebook profile is 'private,' by taking a quiz the user allows its developer to gain access to the user's profile information...by Facebook default, every time one of a user's friends takes a quiz, the quiz has access to that user's profile information." That could have particularly alarming security implications if an app turns out to be malicious.

Facebook does not deny this, but notes that "sensitive" information like contact details are not available to third-party apps, and that Facebook has settings for users to tweak exactly how much their friends' apps can see.

Last month, the company modified its privacy settings to make them more user-friendly.

The ACLU chapter recommends that Facebook make it an opt-in, rather than opt-out process for apps to access a user's friends' data and require that apps list the specific profile data fields that they will be accessing.

"We generally agree with (the ACLU's) recommendations and have already made public announcements about relevant changes that are under way," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. "Specifically, we recently disabled hundreds of applications, including quiz applications, that were inconsistent with Facebook Platform policies...We've also had productive discussions with the Canadian Privacy Commissioner about improving user data controls on Platform. We'd be glad to also have productive discussions with the ACLU and generally catch them up, if they want to give us a call."

The office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, which has taken issue with Facebook's privacy policies, is holding a press conference on Thursday to address the subject, and Facebook plans to hold a conference call with reporters in response.

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Ari Juels' bio below.

Internet denizens and urban dwellers alike need to recognize that an era of anonymity is ending.

The population of the world stands at about 7 billion. So it takes only 10 digits to label each human being on the planet uniquely.

This simple arithmetic observation offers powerful insight into the limits of privacy. It dictates something we might call the 10-Digit Rule: just 10 digits or so of distinctive personal information are enough to identify you uniquely. They're enough to strip away your anonymity on the Internet or call out your name as you walk down the street. The 10-Digit Rule means that as our electronic gadgets grow chattier, and databases swell, we must accept that in most walks of life, we'll soon be wearing our names on our foreheads.

A study of 1990 U.S. Census data revealed that 87 percent of the people in the United States were uniquely identifiable with just three pieces of information (PDF): five-digit ZIP code, gender, and date of birth. Internet surfers today spew considerably more information than that. Web sites can pinpoint our geographical locations, computer models, and browser types, and they can silently track us using cookies. Banking sites even confirm our identities by verifying that our log-ins take place at consistent times of day.

Database dossiers, too, carry surprising amounts of identifying information, even when specifically anonymized for privacy. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin last year studied a set of movie-rating profiles from about 500,000 unnamed Netflix subscribers (PDF).

Knowing just a little about a subscriber--say, six to eight movie preferences, the type of thing you might post on a social-networking site--the researchers found that they could pick out your anonymous Netflix profile, if you had one in the set. The Netflix study shows that those 10 deanonymizing digits can hide in surprising places.

Our physical belongings also betray our anonymity by silently calling out identity-betraying digits. Small wireless microchips--often called radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags--reside in car keys, credit cards, passports, building entrance badges, and transit passes. They emit unique serial numbers.

Once linked to our names--when we make credit card purchases, for instance--these microchips enable us to be tracked without our realizing it. One popular book inflames imaginations with the lurid title, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID."

But wireless microchips also highlight the futility of anonymity protections. To begin with, concerns about RFID tracking miss the forest for the trees. After all, mobile phones are ubiquitous and can be tracked at much longer ranges than standalone chips. Many people have GPS receivers in their phones and are signing up for location-based services, voluntarily (if selectively) disclosing their movements. There's little point in hiding the serial numbers of chips when your mobile phone squeals on you.

Many scientists (including me) have developed antitracking techniques for mobile phones and microchips. Instead of fixed serial numbers, wireless devices can call out changing pseudonyms, such as the rotating license plate numbers on spies' cars in the movies. The problem is that the plates may change, but the car always looks the same. In this regard, chips are like cars.