Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” thirds parties collect user data from many popular web and sites oftenallow this, even though their privacy policies say they don’t sharee user data with others. “Web bugs from Google and its subsidiariesx were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sitex and 88 percent of theapproximatelyy 400,000 unique domains examined in the the authors found. Sites with the most web bugs were forbloggingv — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itselrf was No. 3. Ashkan Soltani, Travis Pinnicjk and Joshua Gomez ofthe university’w information school wrote the study, published Monday.
They analyzed privac y policies posted on web sites and founrd loopholes used by many site operators to allow third parties to stillk collect data on whoviews pages. They also for example, that althougu web sites may reassure visitorsthat “wes don’t share data with third those third parties don’t include a company’s affiliatese — Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for has 137 subsidiary businesses. “The law on affiliatse sharing generally ismore permissive” than that on sharing user data with thirdr party companies, the report said.
Companies controlling the top 50 busiesf web sites had an average of 297affiliatez each, meaning they could share user data with a lot of othef companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’s (NASDAQ: which has more than 1,500 (NYSE: BAC) in Charlottre has more than 2,300 “Users do not know and cannog learn the full range of affiliatese with which websites mayshare information,” the reportf said. Though many Internet users are familiarwith “cookies” used to study theitr surfing habits, they are less familiar with so-calle “web bugs,” which can’t be cleare out of a web since they are part of a web site’se HTML code.
Since the web bugs are createed directly bythird parties, their use doesn’t strictlg count as “sharing” of data by the web site’s though users concerned about privacy may be unimpressed by this technicality. “Wes believe that this practicewcontravenes users’ expectations; it makes littl sense to disclaim formal informationm sharing, but allow functionally equivalent trackinh with third parties,” the report Who's in charge of privacy?
Althougyh surveys of Internet users show people are “very concernef about privacy and do not want websites to collecg and share their personal information without permission,” siftingv through privacy policies is not It would take 200 hours a year for a typicalo person to read the privacy policies of all the web sitew they visit, for example. Thus “users have no practicak way of knowing with whom theifr data willbe shared.” On the policy front, the reportr finds “no one knows who is in charger of protecting privacy” in the Unitedf States.
People can complain to the Federal Trade Commissio n andother agencies, but even the FTC’s “principles for behavioraol tracking make no mention of any enforcementf or accountability.” A low numbet of complaints to various agencies means consumere don’t really know wherw to complain, the report The FTC looks at online privac more in terms of “harms” done to the report said, rather than also in terms of controlp over personal information, which is what most users care The report makes several suggestions for including more aggressive action by the FTC to protectf online privacy.
It also callss for clearer privacy policies onweb sites, writte n so that average users can understand ’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy policy, for example, when analyzef for readability, was written at an equivalent grade level of 17.29. The averagee privacy policy in the studu was written at a grade levelof 13.83. The full studhy can be found .