Posts Tagged ‘Privacy’

How to disable Gmail new feature which allows anyone to send you email without knowing your email

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Last week, Google announced that Gmail users can email their Google+ connections without knowing their email address first. For some, it’s an easy way to stay in touch. For others, it’s a ticket to unwanted email. However you feel, here’s how to turn the feature off, or set it so only the people you want can use it.

Now that the new feature has rolled out to Gmail users (although it hasn’t gotten to Google Apps users, as far as we can see), controlling who can email you is pretty simple:

  • Click here to open the General tab in your Gmail Settings.
  • Scroll down to Email via Google+.
  • Click the drop-down and select your preferred option. “Circles” (which was the default for me) only allows people in your circles—not those who have circled you—to contact you. “Extended circles” allows friends of your friends to email you. “Anyone on Google+” is as the name implies, and we’d suggest avoiding it. To turn the feature off completely, select “No one.”
  • Scroll down and click “Save Changes.”

That’s it.

 


Stop your friends’ Facebook app from accessing YOUR private information

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I thought I had carefully controlled what other people I choose to share my photos and my personal information with me on my Facebook and I was really careful about what third-party Facebook applications I allow to have access to personal details such as my birthday, my status updates, my photos, my location and educational and work history but I was WRONG until today. Read the rest of this entry »


Say “NO” to SOPA

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A new piece of American legislation, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) has been getting a lot of attention the last few weeks. The purpose of the bill is to put a dent in online piracy by allowing the US government to dictate ISPs block access to sites hosting copyrighted materials.

Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! and Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet, something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. Reddit also joins the Anti SOPA blackout.

Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition said:

This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position. The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.

 
The legislation is scheduled for a vote in the US Senate (that would be the PIPA version – i.e., Protect IP Act of 2011) on Jan. 24.

Facebook Feature You Must Activate

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Facebook recently unveiled  the most dramatic updates to its privacy settings in a year. Out of all of them, there’s one new feature that you really must turn on as soon as it becomes available to you: profile review.

Here’s how to activate profile review.

    1. Click on “account” in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, then click on “privacy settings.” 2. Next to “how tags work,” click “edit settings.” 3. Within the “how tags work” pop-up, click “edit” next to “profile review.” 4. In the next pop-up, click “turn on profile review.”

Now, whenever you are tagged in a photo or a post, you’ll have to approve it before it appears on in your news feed or your wall.

Tagged posts and photos will appear in your profile wall in a new section called “pending posts.”

Photos or posts tagged with your name will still appear on your friend’s wall and feed, so your mutual friends will see them.

But Facebook now gives you the option to ask your friend to take down photos of you that you don’t like. And you can always block a friend who refuses to consider your opinions.


Windows Mobile joins the party after Apple (iPhone) and Google(Android) Sued

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After a week windows mobile 7 also joins the party along with Google Android and Apple iPhone, both companies are sued against stealing user sensitive data (like GPS cordinates which is user's pin point location) from user's mobile devices and transmitting over internet then stored at Google and Apple databases.

CNET reported the location tracking on Monday, almost a week after reports of similar tracking in Apple's iPhone and Google's Android mobile OS raised concerns that smartphones could be used by police, civil litigants, or abusive spouses to track an owner's movements over extended periods of time.

Microsoft Version:-
https://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/web/location-and-my-privacy.aspx
 

Sources:-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/25/apple_sued_for_location_tracking/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/28/google_sued_over_android_location_tracking/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/windows_phone_location_tracking/


Google: Street View cars grabbed emails, urls, passwords

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In addition to my previous post “Privacy is dead, People”

Google has publicly acknowledged that the WiFi data collected by its world-roving Street View cars contained entire emails, URLs, and passwords.

On Friday afternoon, with a blog post, senior vice president of engineering Alan Eustace also said – yet again – that most of the data is “fragmentary,” and that the company intends to delete the data “as soon as possible.”

“I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place,” Eustace wrote. “We are mortified by what happened.” The company has always said that the data collection was a “mistake,” saying that code developed by a single engineer was added to its cars although project leaders had no intention of doing so. Independent investigations have said that the data contained emails and passwords as well as home addresses and phone numbers.

In May, it was Eustace who revealed – with another blog post – that Google Street View cars had been collecting data sent over unsecured WiFi networks, contradicting previous claims from the company.

With earlier public statements, Google had said its cars were collecting only the SSIDs that identify WiFi networks and the MAC addresses that identify particular network hardware, including routers. Google uses such data in products that rely on location data, such as Google Maps.

Privacy authorities across the globe launched investigations of Google’s WiFi data collection, and some concluded that the company had violated local laws, including, most recently, Canada privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. Spain has filed a lawsuit against the web giant. Seven investigations have been completed so far, and others are still pending.

When Eustace first revealed the WiFi payload collection, he said the company would review its “procedures to ensure that our controls are sufficiently robust to address these kinds of problems in the future.” And regulators demanded such reviews as well. So, with Friday’s blog post, Eustace also laid out the company’s new internal policies.

The company has appointed Google researcher Alma Whitten as director of privacy for both engineering and product management. “Her focus will be to ensure that we build effective privacy controls into our products and internal practices,” Eustace wrote.

“She has been our engineering lead on privacy for the last two years, and we will significantly increase the number of engineers and product managers working with her in this new role.”

Google has also vowed to increase privacy training among its employees. “We’re enhancing our core training for engineers and other important groups (such as product management and legal) with a particular focus on the responsible collection, use and handling of data.”

Beginning in December, all employees will also go through a new information security awareness program, which will include “clear guidance on both security and privacy.”

What’s more, engineering project leaders will keep document detailing the privacy design of each project they work on. “This document will record how user data is handled and will be reviewed regularly by managers, as well as by an independent internal audit team.”

Google has said that its cars collected about 600GB of WiFi payload data across 30 countries. Some of the data has already been deleted at the insistance of regulators in various countries, including Ireland, Denmark, and Austria. But after complaints from a UK-based independent privacy watchdog, it stopped the deletions, which were overseen by a third-party.

Google did not immediately respond when we asked when the deletion would resume. ®

Update

Google has responded. “In some countries where we’ve been instructed to do so by the authorities, we have deleted the data, “a company spokeswoman said. “We want to delete the rest of the payload data as soon as possible and will continue to work with the authorities to determine the best way forward.”

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