Advertising - Instant Ads Set the Pace on the Web: Via NYTimes.com .

Now, companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears. The technology, called real-time bidding, allows advertisers to examine site visitors one by one and bid to serve them ads almost instantly.

For example, say a man just searched for golf clubs on eBay (which has been testing a system from a company called AppNexus for more than a year). EBay can essentially follow that person’s activities in real time, deciding when and where to show him near-personalized ads for golf clubs throughout the Web.

If eBay finds out that he bought a driver at another site, it can update the ad immediately to start showing him tees, golf balls or a package vacation to St. Andrew’s, Scotland, often called the home of golf. If a woman was shopping, eBay could change the ad’s color or presentation. [ Read more ... ]

Italy Convicts Google Execs To Protect Privacy: Via NPR.

Europeans are debating the overall reach of the Internet into their lives. An Italian court recently convicted three Google executives for privacy violations after a clip was posted on Google Video showing a disabled student being bullied by classmates in Turin. The ruling highlights a deep trans-Atlantic cultural gap: Americans see the ruling as undermining the concept of freedom of expression, while Europeans put privacy first — they consider it a fundamental human right. [ Read more ... ]

Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet: Via Threat Level.

The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.

McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering:  McConnell is the nice-seeming guy who is willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those not in the know.

When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they can start making firewalls and malware into military equipment. And now McConnell, back safely in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, is out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.

And now he says we need to re-engineer the internet. [ Read more ... ]

In Italian Google Case, American and European Ideas of Privacy Collide: Via NYTimes.com .

“On the Internet, the First Amendment is a local ordinance,” said Fred H. Cate, a law professor at Indiana University. He was talking about last week’s ruling from an Italian court that Google executives had violated Italian privacy law by allowing users to post a video on one of its services.

In one sense, the ruling was a nice discussion starter about how much responsibility to place on services like Google for offensive content that they passively distribute.

But in a deeper sense, it called attention to the profound European commitment to privacy, [ Read more ... ]

China Widens Net Censorship; Google Exile Looms: Via Threat Level.

The Chinese government is imposing new internet restrictions demanding personal-website operators to acquire central-government permission to operate their sites.

The latest censorship measure, which covers .cn domestic domains, comes as Google is trying to convince Chinese censors to ease up. Google said 43 days ago it would undertake a self-imposed exile from China if the government does not back off from requiring it to censor search results.

The government said the latest move — which also requires site owners to submit a photograph and to show identification — was targeted at tackling pornography. Critics, though said it was based on silencing political dissent. China did not say when the rules would be enforced. [ Read more ... ]

Are Aggregation Services Security Risks?: Via NYTimes.com .

Do you like social aggregation and tracking services like FriendFeed, Google Buzz and Cliqset? If so, there's another startup launching today that wants your attention: Strings. This service is focused less on social content sites like flickr and YouTube (although supported) and more on traditional online activity like clothing purchases from JCrew or Saks, groceries from Amazon Fresh, beauty products from Sephora and a slew of other purchases from web-based shopping sites.

But before you rush to sign up with yet another activity aggregation service, it may be time to pause and think. Do the benefits of seeing your friends' purchases on sites like Strings and the online shopping tracker Blippy outweigh the risks of handing over login credentials to these third parties? [ Read more ... ]

Italian Court Finds Google Violated Privacy: Via NYT > Privacy.

Google said the case, involving a video of bullying, could undermine freedom of expression on the Internet.

MILAN — Three Google executives were convicted Wednesday of violating Italian privacy laws in a ruling that the company denounced as an “astonishing” attack on freedom of expression on the Internet.

The case involves online videos showing an autistic boy being bullied by classmates in Turin, which were posted in 2006 on Google Video, an online video-sharing service that Google ran before its acquisition of YouTube.

Prosecutors charged that the videos violated Italian personal privacy protections. They said the clips were removed only after complaints from Vivi Down, an Italian organization representing people with Down syndrome, whose name was mentioned in the videos.

“We are definitely satisfied that someone has to take responsibility for this violation of privacy,” said Guido Camera, a lawyer for Vivi Down. [ Read more ... ]

‘Sophisticated’ Hack Hit Intel in January: Via Threat Level.

Intel is the latest U.S. corporation to acknowledge that it was hacked in January in a sophisticated attack that occurred at the same time that Google, Adobe and others were targeted.

The giant California-based chip maker was rumored to have been among some 34 companies that were targeted, but said on Tuesday there was no evidence to tie its hack to the attack on Google and others.

“We did not see the kind of broad-based attack as described by Google,” said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. “Companies routinely see hackers trying to get into their system. It is a risk factor and that’s why it was in the 10k. We’ve seen no loss of [intellectual property] as a result of any of these attacks.”

In its latest 10k filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Intel disclosed that it had been the target of a “sophisticated incident occurred in January 2010 around the same time as the recently publicized security incident reported by Google. [ Read more ... ]

Probe Traces Google Hack to Chinese Schools: Via Threat Level.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Recent cyber attacks on Google and other American corporations have been traced to a top Chinese university as well as a school with ties to the Chinese military, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing people involved in the investigation.

Those people told the Times that the Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School. They said the attacks may have started as early as April 2009 — earlier than previously thought.

According to the report, investigators believe there is evidence suggesting a link to a computer science class at the vocational school taught by a Ukrainian professor.

Google jolted U.S.-China ties with its Jan. 12 announcement that it had faced a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” in mid-December, allegedly from inside China. [ Read more ... ]

Student slaps Google Buzz with privacy lawsuit: Via The Money Times .

Lawsuit against Google

Now a student at Harvard Law School has filed a class action suit against the company for making personal information of the users public.

Law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have sued Google on behalf of Eva Hibnick.

The 24-year-old law student filed the law suit against the search giant after finding herself automatically opted to the new networking service, without consent. [ Read more ... ]

The Time Has Come to Protect Reader Privacy: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

(Originally posted on the ACLU of Northern California's Bytes and Pieces blog.)

Today, Google and the authors and publishers who sued Google are hoping that United States District Court Judge Denny Chin will approve their settlement and allow Google to launch the world's largest digital library and bookstore combined.

While the ACLU strongly supports increased access to books, we have filed an objection to this settlement on behalf of a coalition of authors and publishers — including best sellers Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem and publisher Lawrence Ferlenghetti — who have serious concerns that reader privacy and free speech is being left out of the story. They think that a settlement that does not protect the privacy and free speech of readers is not fair to their readers, or fair to them. That's why we're in federal court in New York today, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, urging Judge Chin to reject the settlement and insist on one with greater privacy and free speech protections for users. [ Read more ... ]

Google Buzzkill: Via Freedom to Tinker.

The launch of Google Buzz, the new social networking service tied to GMail, was a fiasco to say the least. Its default settings exposed people's e-mail contacts in frightening ways with serious privacy and human rights implications. Evgeny Morozov, who specializes in analyzing how authoritarian regimes use the Internet, put it bluntly last Friday in a blog post: "If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government."

According to the BBC, the Buzz development team bypassed Google's standard trial and testing procedures in order to launch the product quickly. [ Read more ... ]

Security bug opens Google Buzz to hackers: Via Security Central - InfoWorld.

The cross-site scripting flaw was discovered by the same person who hacked Miley Cyrus' e-mail

A common Web programming error could give hackers a way to take over Google Buzz accounts, a security expert said Tuesday.

The flaw is a "medium-sized problem" with the Buzz for Mobile Web site, said Robert Hansen, CEO of SecTheory, who first reported the issue.

This type of Web programming error, called a cross-site scripting flaw, lets the attacker put his own scripting code into Web pages that belong to trusted Web sites such as Google.com. It is a fairly common flaw but one that can have major consequences when exploited on widely used Web sites.

The attacker "can force you to say things you don't want to say, to follow people," he said. "Whatever Google Buzz allows you to do, it allows him to do to you." [ Read more ... ]

Google Books Fosters Intellectual, Legal Crossroads: Via Threat Level.

Nobody in their right mind opposes the intellectual soundness of digitizing the world’s books – even titles gathering dust in the stacks of university libraries — and making them available online.

Yet Google will encounter stiff resistance in a Manhattan federal court Thursday during a marathon hearing that could grant Google the keys to free the written word from a business and intellectual model as old as paper and ink.

“The benefits of approval are bounded only by the limits of human creativity and imagination,” Google told U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in a recent court filing ahead of Thursday’s hearing.

The final word on the so-named “Google Books” plan won’t rest with Judge Chin, and instead likely could fall on the U.S. Supreme Court. [ Read more ... ]

Cybersecurity is Not Your Gig, NSA!: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The news that the NSA and Google are working on a deal for the military agency to help protect the information giant's data networks comes at a time when the NSA is angling to get a major piece of cybersecurity action.

The only problem is, despite what the agency would have us believe, the NSA is mainly a spy agency, not a cybersecurity agency. The agency's website says:

The NSA/CSS core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information.

The Information Assurance mission confronts the formidable challenge of preventing foreign adversaries from gaining access to sensitive or classified national security information. The Signals Intelligence mission collects, processes, and disseminates intelligence information from foreign signals for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support military operations. [ Read more ... ]

Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers: Via EFF.org Updates.

San Francisco - What questions should consumers ask before buying a digital book or reader? Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published "Digital Books and Your Rights," a checklist for readers considering buying into the digital book marketplace.

Over the last few months, the universe of digital books has expanded dramatically, with products like Amazon's Kindle, Google Books, Internet Archive's Text Archive, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and Apple's upcoming iPad poised to revolutionize reading. But while this digital books revolution could make books more accessible than ever before, there are lingering questions about the future of reader privacy, consumers' rights, and potential censorship.

EFF's checklist outlines eight categories of questions readers should ask as they evaluate new digital book products and services, including: [ Read more ... ]

The Google Buzz Launch -- and the Limits of Downing Dogfood: Via Lauren Weinstein's Blog.

Greetings. There's an old Hollywood adage suggesting that most of the time, "any publicity is good publicity." When it comes to the launch of Google Buzz, there's definitely some truth to that saying -- the widely discussed privacy issues associated with the launch have yielded the product a significant global awareness far outside the world of current Gmail users. And reports are that usage of Buzz is (sorry, I can't resist) buzzin' along at a very significant clip.

Still, the very public privacy controversies regarding Buzz over the week since its debut (hard to believe it's only been a week) are both fascinating and instructive.

In "Google Buzz" -- and the Risks of "Automatic Friends" I noted my own concerns about specific features of the original Buzz start-up experience defaults, and expressed the hope that Google would reconsider those defaults. [ Read more ... ]

Google Alters Buzz Service Over Privacy Concerns - NYTimes.com: Via NYTimes.com .

Google moved quickly over the weekend to try to contain mounting criticism of Buzz, its social network, apologizing to users for features that were widely seen as endangering privacy and announcing product changes to address those concerns.

Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, wrote in a blog post on Saturday that Google had decided to alter one of the most-criticized features in Buzz: the ready-made circle of friends the service provided to new users based on their most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Instead of automatically connecting people, Buzz will in the future merely suggest to new users a group of people they may want to follow or be followed by, he said.

Mr. Jackson, who said that the auto-follow feature had been intended to make it easy for people to get started on Buzz, acknowledged the criticism that was heaped on Google in the last few days.

“We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback,” Mr. Jackson wrote. “We’ll continue to do so.” [ Read more ... ]

Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service: Via NYT > Privacy.

SAN FRANCISCO — When Google introduced Buzz — its answer to Facebook and Twitter — it hoped to get the service off to a fast start. New users of Buzz, which was added to Gmail on Tuesday, found themselves with a ready-made network of friends automatically selected by the company based on the people that each user communicated with most frequently through Google’s e-mail and chat services.

But what Google viewed as an obvious shortcut stirred up a beehive of angry critics. Many users bristled at what they considered an invasion of privacy, and they faulted the company for failing to ask permission before sharing a person’s Buzz contacts with a broad audience. For the last three days, Google has faced a firestorm of criticism on blogs and Web sites, and it has already been forced to alter some features of the service.

E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists. [ Read more ... ]

Google May Offer Buzz Independently From Gmail: Via Search Engine Land.

Google says it may allow people to participate in Google Buzz without having it integrated within Gmail, in addition to offering a combined Gmail service. That may be a welcome move from users of both products, especially in light of the substantial privacy concerns voiced this week about Google Buzz.

“It’s clear that interest in Buzz may extend beyond the current Gmail base, and we’re open to serving that community,” said Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Product Marketing, when I spoke to him about some Buzz issues at the TED Conference.

Horowitz stressed that Google would still offer a version of Buzz within Gmail, in addition to any independent version.

[...]

Meanwhile, there’s also the privacy issue. Since Buzz is tied to Gmail, people are forced to expose their Gmail address if they want ot have a profile URL that isn’t a string of numbers. And even if they don’t, it turns out there’s still a way that Buzz can give away your Gmail address. [ Read more ... ]

Protect Your Privacy on Google Buzz: Via EFF.org Updates.

Google's new social networking service, Buzz has upset a lot of people who have inadvertently posted the list of the people they email and chat with most frequently on their profile. If you took the default options and didn't opt-out or edit this list during profile creation, the list becomes part of your profile. Since who you email with frequently can often be private information (reporters and sources, doctors and patients, former significant others, etc), making this list public can create serious problems.

If you're going to use Google Buzz, we recommend that you opt-out during profile creation. If you have already created a profile, change it to private immediately. Then go through the suggested list, and edit it as appropriate before making it public again. PC World has a helpful privacy checklist to help users understand the privacy implications of Google Buzz options. [ Read more ... ]

Google Buzz: Privacy nightmare: Via Molly Rants - CNET News.

I know some of the technorati are losing their minds over the awesomeness that is Google Buzz, but I think that Google's making a lot of Facebook's privacy and opt-in mistakes right out of the gate, and it's going to bite it big-time, if it doesn't fix it pronto.

I, for one, have already opted out of the entire endeavor.

See, I love the idea of neat new tech innovations that lead to streamlined communication, real-time updating, in-line video and photo posting, and supersimple friend and contact integration. I do not, however, like a product that bursts through my door like a tornado and opts me in to wanton in-box clutter and spam (or, more precisely, bacn) publicly reveals my personal contact list without asking me, threatens to broadcast my e-mail address anytime someone wants to @ me in a Buzz, and even appears to grab photos off my Android phone that I've never uploaded. [ Read more ... ]

Using Google Buzz? Here’s a privacy checklist: Via PC World- msnbc.com .

If you've heard of Google Buzz, chances are you've also heard about some of the privacy concerns that surround it. The social media service offers some cool ways to share photos, links, status messages, and more with fellow Google Buzz users. But if you're not careful, you may end up sharing more than you expect.

Silicon Alley Insider raised some very real privacy concerns about Google Buzz this week, noting that the service ends up exposing many of your e-mail contacts by default. That's a problem if you have e-mail contacts you'd rather not make public.

You also can't hide your e-mail contacts without cutting them off from your Buzz network. [ Read more ... ]

Google Buzz criticized for disclosing Gmail contacts: Via Computerworld Privacy News.

One day after its launch, privacy concerns have been raised about Google's new Gmail-based social-networking tool, Buzz.

At issue is a feature that compiles a list of the Gmail contacts who users most frequently e-mail or chat with. Buzz automatically starts following these people and makes the list public, meaning strangers can see who Buzz users have been in contact with.

The issue was noted by the Silicon Alley Insider on Wednesday. "Imagine ... a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend," the Web site said. "Imagine a boss discovers a subordinate emails with executives at a competitor." [ Read more ... ]

"Google Buzz" -- and the Risks of "Automatic Friends": Via Lauren Weinstein's Blog.

Whether or not the goal of Google Buzz (let's call it "Gbuzz" for now) is really to be a Twitter or Facebook "killer" as some observers have suggested, Google is doing a couple of key things very differently with Gbuzz -- one of them very positive, the other seemingly quite problematic.

[...]

Now for the not so excellent. Gbuzz, being tightly integrated with Gmail, apparently makes the implicit assumption that your frequent e-mail contacts should also automatically be declared as your "friends" for social update sharing purposes, and by default creates automatic "follow" lists on this basis.

Maybe this will work just fine for some people, but man, it might be just plain dangerous for others -- perhaps especially those persons who use a single Gmail account to communicate with both personal friends and business associates. Is routinely updating your business acquaintances with the same information as your personal contacts typically appropriate? Doubtful. [ Read more ... ]