WebProNews

Tag: Information

  • Facebook Fights ‘Unprecedented’ Data Grab

    Facebook says that they are currently fighting a “set of sweeping search warrants” in an effort to protect their users’ information – and so far it’s a fight that they’ve been losing.

    “Since last summer, we’ve been fighting hard against a set of sweeping search warrants issued by a court in New York that demanded we turn over nearly all data from the accounts of 381 people who use our service, including photos, private messages and other information. This unprecedented request is by far the largest we’ve ever received—by a magnitude of more than ten—and we have argued that it was unconstitutional from the start,” says Facebook Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby.

    “Of the 381 people whose accounts were the subject of these warrants, 62 were later charged in a disability fraud case. This means that no charges will be brought against more than 300 people whose data was sought by the government without prior notice to the people affected. The government also obtained gag orders that prohibited us from discussing this case and notifying any of the affected people until now.”

    According to the New York Times, the “sweeping warrants” came during the investigation into a fraud case involving retired police officers, firefighters, and other civil servants who’ve been charged with filing fake disability claims. The information obtained from Facebook was crucial to the investigation, as photos taken from the site showed “disabled” people, well, not acting very disabled.

    The Manhattan DA’s office says that multiple courts have already found Facebook’s protestations without merit.

    “This was a massive scheme involving as many as 1,000 people who defrauded the federal government of more than $400 million in benefits,” said a spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA Cyrus R. Vance Jr. “The defendants in this case repeatedly lied to the government about their mental, physical and social capabilities. Their Facebook accounts told a different story. A judge found there was probable cause to execute search warrants, and two courts have already found Facebook’s claims without merit.”

    That’s true, and Facebook said that they eventually complied with the data request only after they were denied in appeals court.

    But now, they’ve filed another in their “continuing efforts to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized and retained.”

    This isn’t the first time that Facebook has pushed back against overbroad data requests. But this is the first time we’ve seen Facebook challenge the notion that they must comply with a warrant they deem in violation of their users’ Fourth Amendment rights.

    Facebook has always had a decent relationship with law enforcement – one that is cooperative enough to have been accused of being a bit too chummy. But in their latest fight, Facebook’s pretty clear that this sort of “overreaching legal request” goes way too far.

    “We believe search warrants for digital information should be specific and narrow in scope, just like warrants for physical evidence. These restrictions are critical to preventing overreaching legal requests and protecting people’s information,” says Sonderby.

  • Like Privacy? You May Have Some Opting Out To Do.

    Have you ever looked at Spokeo? If not, you might want to check it out – that is if you’re concerned about your online privacy. There’s a good chance they have a profile on you, and it may have more information than you care to have publicly accessible in any one place. And that’s just the free part, if you pay, you can get access to even more information. 

    Do you approve of Spokeo hosting this information? Tell us what you think. 

    Spokeo would not let us interview them, but they did tell us: 

    "The driving force behind our product was to create a more efficient and user-friendly people-search engine that would allow users to locate information and keep up with their friends more easily."

    "It’s important to understand, however, that offering a more efficient mechanism by which to pull together information is not the same as providing greater access to personal information."

    We spoke with privacy advocate Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of privacy research firm, The Ponemon Institute. "From a privacy perspective, it’s kind of a scary event when you, as in individual don’t have control over your personal information," he tells WebProNews. "In a nutshell, we all feel like we should somehow be involved in making that decision – whether information about us is being shared with third-parties and organizations. And Spokeo is in the business of selling information about people, as I understand it, without getting any consent or any advanced opt-in or opt-out. We are basically powerless against organizations like Spokeo."

    By the way, your home address is likely included in your Spokeo profile, which is conveniently aided by Google Maps Street View, so anyone searching for you can virtually go right up to your front door. Street View itself has had plenty of privacy battles over the years on its own. Those worried about that should just love Spokeo’s integration. 

    "There’s also a secondary issue, which is really equally as scary," says Ponemon. "That’s the possibility that information used and collected about you, by companies like Spokeo, is in fact inaccurate information…can you imagine information that is inaccurate, and then people making decisions about you on the basis of not the truth, but inaccurate information? And you again, as a consumer, are powerless to do anything to even change the information known to be inaccurate."

    By browsing the profile created about me on the site, it is clear that there are indeed plenty of inaccuracies in the information, which really makes me wonder how many more inaccuracies are available for paying customers. 

    As our own Abby Johnson mentions in the video above, the inaccuracies of Spokeo’s information likely stem from public databases that are not maintained.

    "I understand the business model that Spokeo is in, and I’m sure they’re going to make a ton of money if they have the legal right to continue what they do, but from a privacy and an information and ethics perspective, this is is a big problem," says Ponemon. 

    "The general issue in privacy litigation is that you have to establish harm, and the problem in many of the cases – and this is why a lot of cases get dismissed early – is because it’s hard to demonstrate harm, when in fact your information is inaccurate or it’s misused or you’re not involved in the decision for the organization to collect and use that information. It seems that the key issue is demonstrating harm," he continues. "The problem is that you can’t look at harm in a short timeline, because right now you have inaccurate information, so what’s the harm? Maybe there’s almost no harm to you. But mabye five or six or seven years from now, there will be an employment decision made based on the infromation contained today in Spokeo. Maybe you’ll be denied a job or maybe you’ll be denied a loan…"

    He thinks organizations like the FTC will take a close look. 

    A Spokeo spokesperson told WebProNews, "As part of our commitment to privacy, Spokeo offers an opt-out feature that is faster and easier to complete than most other people search sites. All that is required of users is an email verification process, not submitting hard copies of driver’s licenses, Social Security Numbers, or other forms of identity via fax or mail."

    The opt-out process does appear to work. I went through it, and my profile disappeared. Given that Spokeo’s such a household name, this should set everyone’s mind at ease.  (sarcasm intended, in case that wasn’t obvious) 

    I’ll have to remember to check back from time to time and make sure it stays gone. 

    You can read Spokeo’s privacy policy here. 

    By the way, Spokeo’s traffic has been skyrocketing, with over 9 million unique visitors in January, according to Compete.

    Do you find Spokeo’s practices to be a violation of privacy? Share your thoughts.

  • Qwiki Opens Up to the Public

    Qwiki Opens Up to the Public

    Qwiki opened up to the public today in alpha form, after being in private alpha since launching in October. 

    Qwiki was in the news last week, as it secured a new round of funding led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and now the world can see what all the fuss is about. 

    Just what is Qwiki? From a user perspective, think about it as Wikipedia if the articles were read to you in a robotic voice while showing you related imagery, and offering you easy ways to share and embed the content. At least that’s how it appears. 

    Qwiki’s mission statement says:

    We are the first to turn information into an experience. We believe that just because data is stored by machines doesn’t mean it should be presented as a machine-readable list. Let’s try harder.

    Think of asking your favorite teacher about Leonardo Da Vinci, or your most well-traveled friend about Buenos Aires: this is the experience Qwiki will eventually deliver, on demand, wherever you are in the world… on whatever device you’re using.

    Here’s what a Qwiki looks like embedded:

    Qwiki has a long way to go before it becomes as broad a resource as Wikipedia, but given that it’s only just launched to the public in Alpha status, we can probably give it some time. 

    "Based on the overwhelming positive response to Qwiki’s private testing, I’m pleased to release the alpha version of our reference product to the public," said CEO  and co-founder Doug Imbruce. "We believe Qwiki has created a more organic method of information consumption by merging art and science and are excited to improve the product in response to more user feedback."

    "Qwiki is not search — it’s a new media format and a groundbreaking method of consuming information, said CTO and co-founder Dr. Louis Monier. "The future of Qwiki is to allow mass creation and customization of rich media via our platform, and our new public alpha features represent the first step towards that vision."

    I’ve been signed up for the private beta for a while, and I have to say I’ve simply enjoyed getting the daily emails from the service, which give you random facts for things that happened on that day in a different year. 

     

  • New York Times Could Announce Paid Model This Week

    New York magazine is reporting that the New York Times could be announcing its own move to a paid subscription model as early as this week. If this is the case, we may see more of the dominoes fall in this tenuous conversation. It seems that whenever anyone discusses even the threat of paid content online, a hush comes over the room and people start to whisper like they do when your creepy uncle shows up at the family reunion. Well, whether this is the time or not, this could be the year where content makes a break from the free world to either save itself or crash and burn in spectacular fashion for all to watch.

    New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

    There are a wide variety of thoughts on the actual time that the announcement and then the service would happen so suffice it to say, it could be this week and it could be in a few months. The point is that there is pretty good chance that this will happen. When it does there will be plenty of interested parties looking on to help them determine what might be next. Apparently this has not been an easy discussion for the Times and they have looked at several options.

    The Times has considered three types of pay strategies. One option was a more traditional pay wall along the lines of The Wall Street Journal, in which some parts of the site are free and some subscription-only. For example, editors and business-side executives discussed a premium version of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook section. Another option was the metered system. The third choice, an NPR-style membership model, was abandoned last fall, two sources explained. The thinking was that it would be too expensive and cumbersome to maintain because subscribers would have to receive privileges (think WNYC tote bags and travel mugs, access to Times events and seminars).

    Now, the article in New York does examine how difficult this process is for the Times because in reality, they are trying to assess what their worth is to the English speaking world from a journalistic and reporting standpoint. Some feel that they could be the last one standing as others go away as a result of online media. If that were the case, the NY Times could garner plenty of ad revenue if they could hold on in the near term. Others are just watching the paper bleed money and feel that there may never be enough ad revenue in the new media world to support the level of reporting etc that they are used to promoting.

    I am not sure where I am on this one. I would like to see news outlets like the New York Times survive. We need to pay people to cover stories and do the necessary digging to hopefully get somewhere near the truth. The trouble comes in whether the truth is ever the issue or not. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if a publication is on the left or the right of the political spectrum because the real concern is the bias that exists in many of these big publications. Everything that is reported is spun and often those who get to the position of being a Times reporter use that position as a power base. As a result reporting is out the window. It’s more like opinion and agenda with a few facts thrown in here and there. Sounds a lot like bloggers actually!

    Anyway, here’s the easy question for our readers. Would you pay to get the New York Times content online? Yes or no. Oh and since we are a blog please let us hear your opinions as well.

    Comments