addresses

Last week Google announced that they were protecting user privacy (their words not mine) by modifying IP addresses in their activity logs after 9 months. Fellow CNET blogger Chris Soghoian felt this was a sham because it ignored cookies, but it brings up an interesting point, just what does your IP address say about you? Or, in other words, does your IP address point to you?

In some ways, an IP address does identify you or else there would be no need for Google to "anonymize IP addresses" in order to "address regulatory concerns" (again, their … Read more

Under pressure from European regulators, Google is halving the amount of time its stores Internet Protocol addresses.

In a blog post, Google said it would keep IP addresses on its server logs for 9 months before anonymizing them, down from the 18 months it had previously stored the data.

A European Commission advisory body issued an opinion paper earlier this year urging search engines to delete data collected about their users after six months.

At the time, Google said the proposals could have an impact on its ability "to provide quality products and services for users, like accurate search … Read more

I remember my first cell phone being the Ericsson KF788. It had a three-line resolution on a black and white screen and an address book that had enough fields to store only a person's name and one phone number. If a friend had two phone numbers, I would have to create two separate entries. That was way back when, well, in 2001.

Cell phones have evolved so much since then, and, along the way, their internal address books have evolved right along with them. In the address book of today's smart phones, you can store almost any information … Read more

Google has revamped the contacts section of Gmail to let users decide who's on their A-list.

Gmail adds a contact entry for every e-mail you use, and previously showed either the full list or the "Most Contacted" subset Google chose. Now the service divides contacts into a "My Contacts" list that users can define and a "Suggested Contacts" list with everyone else.

Google announced the move on its Gmail blog on Thursday.

Automation still plays a part: The service can be set to automatically add to "My Contacts" anybody you send … Read more

Gmail users now have some extra ways to make sure no one can snoop around in their e-mail accounts, a post Monday afternoon on the Official Gmail Blog explained. The Google e-mail service provider is introducing a feature so that members can see where they're logged in and then opt to log out if they want.

The feature is currently rolling out to Gmail members using the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers.

At the bottom of your Gmail window, you will now see if you're logged on in any other locations, the post by engineer Erwin D'Souza … Read more

The Firefox 3 honeymoon is over.

It is indeed awesome, but it could use a little tweaking to keep your surfing a high-speed affair, right? You're in luck, because there are some easy tweaks.

The other day, we pointed you toward how to get rid of the updated address bar's new features completely, but why not just tweak what you see, instead? Here are some tips to bail you out.

1. Control how many listings you're getting. The default number of sites that show up on the Smart Location Bar, or "awesome bar," of the … Read more

Fulfilling a second major part of its promise to make the internal workings of its Web site more extroverted, Yahoo is opening the interface for its address book for outside use.

The move could mean that Yahoo, struggling under business pressures but still a stronghold of Web activity, could become more tightly tied to others' Web services. For example, a programmer starting up a social networking site could use the interface to send invitations to a member's list of contacts stored at Yahoo.

"Our address book has for a long time been one of the top things developers … Read more

It's no shock that contact management site Plaxo has been a fierce advocate of data portability. As a result, it's not particularly surprising that the service continues to expand browser-to-desktop application functions: on Wednesday, the company announced that the latest version of its downloadable Mac client will sync the Plaxo Pulse social network to Apple's Address Book software. This comes in the wake of an announcement that data from Pulse--which aggregates feeds from social media sites like Flickr and Twitter into a common profile--would also sync with Microsoft Outlook.

The new version of Plaxo's Mac client, … Read more

On August 31, Lakshmana Kailash K. was arrested in Bangalore, India, and charged with posting insulting images of a revered historical figure on the Internet. The police claimed that he had uploaded disrespectful images of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the Indian equivalent of George Washington. Free speech, it seems, does not extend to that sort of thing in India.

Normally, this wouldn't be a press-worthy story. After all, India is not the first country to take a hard line against Internet free speech. The Thai military regime blocked the entire YouTube Web site earlier this year after a single video posted … Read more