privacy

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to record and store information about Americans' private text messages for at least two years, according to a proposal that police have submitted to the U.S. Congress.

CNET has learned a constellation of law enforcement groups has asked the U.S. Senate to require that wireless companies retain that information, warning that the lack of a current federal requirement "can hinder law enforcement investigations."

They want an SMS retention requirement to be "considered" during congressional discussions over updating a 1986 privacy law … Read more

Facebook is in the process of rolling out a new feature called Photo Sync to iPhone and Android users. When enabled, photos taken on the device will be automatically uploaded to a private "Synced from Phone" Facebook photo album.

In order to start using Photo Sync, you'll need to manually enable it. As Facebook continues to roll it out to all users your account may or may not have it right away; keep checking back if it doesn't show up right away.

A U.S. Senate panel this morning approved a landmark privacy bill that would curb law enforcement's warrantless access to the contents of e-mail, private Facebook posts, and other data that Americans store in the cloud.

The voice vote was a victory for a coalition of technology firms including Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which had urged Congress to update a 1986 law to reflect changes in technology -- and preserve the same privacy rights that Americans enjoy if their files are printed out and stored in a cabinet at home.

"We have to update our digital privacy … Read more

Downloading apps, especially free apps, can be quite addictive. You see a random free app featured on a blog, linked to in a tweet or mentioned by a friend and you promptly download it. You soon realize the app adds no real value to your life, so you delete it from your device. Somewhere down the road you want to re-download an app from your Google Play Store history. You browse on over to your download history only to find a never-ending list of apps.

In the past you'd be stuck with this long list of apps; unable to … Read more

Peter Swire, an Ohio State law professor and privacy expert who has worked with the Obama administration, is stepping into a contentious process to create a standard way to let people stop Web sites from tracking their online behavior.

Aleecia M. McDonald announced today she's stepping down as co-chair of the Do Not Track standardization effort at the World Wide Web Consortium. She previously worked for Firefox maker Mozilla, which launched the current DNT technology after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sought a mechanism to block online tracking, but she currently works for a program within Stanford University'… Read more

Stripped of its controversial provision for warrantless e-mail acccess, Sen. Patrick Leahy's bill to rewrite electronic privacy and surveillance law will head for a vote on Thursday.

The Vermont Democrat said in a press release yesterday that his latest amendments to the bill will be privacy-protective. They no longer include language that would have allowed more than 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' private e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant.

A CNET article last week disclosed the existence … Read more

If you've been on Instagram long enough, you've likely acquired a few followers whom you don't know. Of course, if you are trying to build your Instagram brand, you'll take all comers. If you are like me, however, and use Instagram primarily to share pictures of your kids with friends and family, you are wary of strangers in your midst. Thankfully, Instagram provides some privacy settings that can help you gain better control of who can see your photos.

In this post, I'll show you how you can use Instagram's settings to restrict who … Read more

Facebook is about to take its policy changes to an official vote among its users. And if history is any guide, turnout will be low and Facebook will proceed to make the changes it wants. That includes how it collects data from Instagram users, which has privacy advocates protesting and urging CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reverse course.

Facebook last week proposed a series of policy changes that, along with changes to how it handles your data, would abolish the social network's practice of allowing users to vote on policy changes.

That's right. Facebook wants to do away with … Read more

Facebook has incurred the wrath of privacy groups because of proposed policy changes it announced last week.

The executive directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy penned a letter (pdf) to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to withdraw changes that they say would impact the privacy of the social network's 1 billion users and break its previous settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.

The battle began when Facebook announced a proposal to overhaul its system last week, saying that it had outgrown its old model. The two groups say there are … Read more