Privacy advocates praise Google's new link
Updated at 12:35 p.m. and 3:50 p.m.: Comments from privacy advocates have been added.
Google apparently decided to keep it clean, in more ways than one.
The company has made a minor change to its home page, adding a link to its copyright line that leads to its Privacy Center. Google's decision, noted Thursday afternoon in a corporate blog and a public policy blog, was an attempt to quell a controversy over the posting of its privacy policy.
The attempt succeeded.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Saturday that his group is "pleased" with the decision.
"This was not only required by California law (and Google is a California corporation) but is also the standard practice for commercial Web sites," he said in an e-mail.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center had joined with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the World Privacy Forum in leading the effort to press Google to make the change.
Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, also welcomed Google's decision.
"Although privacy policies are not a guarantee of perfect privacy practices, they are still an important tool for consumers," she said Saturday in an e-mail. Dixon added that such links are "something consumers have come to expect, and rightly so given that it is a standard practice."
The timing of Google's announcement--the afternoon before a long holiday weekend--may have appeared suspicious to some. But Rotenberg noted that his group "helped draw attention to the 30-day time limit in the California law following notice. We literally counted to 30 after sending the letter. Day 31 arrived and Google posted the link."
(Credit:
Google)
Saul Hansell, a reporter with The New York Times, first brought the issue to light in May when he asked whether the company was violating California law by not posting a link to its privacy policy on its home page.
Privacy advocates soon got involved, sending Google a formal letter on June 3 (PDF). Google had maintained that it was doing nothing unlawful.
Being a holiday weekend, reaction to Google's change has been a bit sparse. At least one member of the blogosphere asserts that the link doesn't resolve the issue because it doesn't link directly to the privacy policy. Another concludes that the whole controversy was silly to begin with.
Google competitors Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Ask.com, by the way, all provide links to their privacy policies on their home pages.
A couple of side notes: Google Vice President Marissa Mayer noted in the corporate blog that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin required the famously sparse home page to remain clean at 28 words, even with the change. Thus, the company removed the word "Google" from the copyright line and replaced it with "Privacy." Also her blog's title--"What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28..."--was remarkably obscure.
Natalie Weinstein is an associate editor who works out of Austin, Texas. She spent a decade as a reporter and editor in the newspaper industry before joining the CNET News staff in 2000. E-mail Natalie. 
Cheers !
- If you read the article, it doesn't really seem that the author was being very serious about his complaints. Actually, according to his comment at the bottom, he was making fun of the California law.
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
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Mary Pozo
mary pozo
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Source:
AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours - By David Lazarus
Date: Wednesday, June 21, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHB9C1.DTL&type=business
AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers' personal data with government officials.
The new policy says that AT&T -- not customers -- owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."
The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service -- something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing.
Moreover, AT&T (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service -- a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers' recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others. [http:// . . . |http:// . . . ]
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But besides AT&T, all of the Comcasts, Coxes, Time Warners, Verizons, Qwests, etc. they all know what you do online. The Cable Companies can prob. even tally what you watch on TV with their cable boxes albeit without mentioning you personally. People need to get over the idea that whatever is done online is anonymous.... Even those sites that offer Anon protection. How many of you actually know who is running that site? And how do you know they themselves aren't saving your info to get your bank account info or other stuff... If people would act online in a matter that they wouldn't mind exposing to the whole world they wont have any worries.
go to google dot com and paste this into the address bar and press enter. this is what it should look like.
this: (select and copy-paste into address bar of http://www.google.com)
javascript:window.onresize=new Function('var f=document.links[http://document.links.length-1|http://document.links.length-1];f.style.position="absolute";f.style.top=0;f.style.left=0;f.style.fontSize=Math.floor(document.body.offsetWidth/3.25)+"px";');void(window.onresize());
javascript:window.onresize=new Function('var f=document.links'+unescape('%5b')+'document.links.length-1];f.style.position="absolute";f.style.top=0;f.style.left=0;f.style.fontSize=Math.floor(document.body.offsetWidth/3.25)+"px";');void(window.onresize());
- by faceless128 July 7, 2008 12:47 PM PDT
- ''Also her blog's title--"What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28..."--was remarkably obscure.''
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(17 Comments)it's the number of words on google's homepage. it's 28 now, and stayed at 28 because they swapped 'Google' for 'Privacy'