Posts Tagged: "Privacy Concerns"

Near the end of her presentation Bartow asked a particularly enlightening question. If China can crackdown so thoroughly on its citizens why couldn’t they crackdown on intellectual property infringement and IP crimes? She explained: “Because it isn’t in their interest.” Bartow explained that in the Chinese view it doesn’t make sense to change their view of intellectual property rights because so many within the country are becoming wealthy as a direct result of widespread intellectual property infringement. Bartow ended by saying that as long as this is the view of intellectual property it will be difficult to attract the companies that they really want to attract.

This system creates data that obfuscates the search query submitted by a user so that it cannot be tracked by a third party, while still providing relevant search results. Other patent applications describing business software innovations include a method of generating consumer decision trees based on in-store transaction records, and a way to prevent others from copying the text of sensitive electronic documents. The issued patents assigned recently to Oracle highlight some interesting intellectual property holdings that further advance the corporation’s goal in providing inclusive software solutions for businesses. Business connected to a distributed pool of network resources shared with others will benefit from an electronic resource broker agent protected in one patent.

The creator of one of the most popular apps for Android mobile devices has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the free app, which allows a device to be used as a flashlight, deceived consumers about how their geolocation information would be shared with advertising networks and other third parties. In its complaint, the FTC alleges that Goldenshores’ privacy policy told consumers that any information collected by the Brightest Flashlight app would be used by the company, and listed some categories of information that it might collect. The policy, however, did not mention that the information would also be sent to third parties, such as advertising networks.

How is it possible that no one is going to jail for this? How is it possible that there were no fines levied by the FTC? According to the FTC’s complaint, Aaron’s franchisees used the software, which surreptitiously tracked consumers’ locations, captured images through the computers’ webcams – including those of adults engaged in intimate activities – and activated keyloggers that captured users’ login credentials for email accounts and financial and social media sites. Under the terms of the proposed consent agreement with the FTC, Aaron’s will be prohibited from using monitoring technology that captures keystrokes or screenshots, or activates the camera or microphone on a consumer’s computer, except to provide technical support requested by the consumer.

The 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which provides a number of rules and regulations with respect to children’s online privacy, recently got an overhaul. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) amended COPPA in December of 2012 and those amendments are scheduled to take effect starting July 1, 2013.

The Federal Trade Commission initiated a review in 2010 to ensure that the COPPA Rule keeps up with evolving technology and changes in the way children use and access the Internet, including the increased use of mobile devices and social networking. The FTC has now adopted final amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule that strengthen kids’ privacy protections and give parents greater control over the personal information that websites and online services may collect from children under 13.

The Federal Trade Commission issued orders requiring nine data brokerage companies to provide the agency with information about how they collect and use data about consumers. The agency will use the information to study privacy practices in the data broker industry. The nine data brokers receiving orders from the FTC are: 1) Acxiom, 2) Corelogic, 3) Datalogix, 4) eBureau, 5) ID Analytics, 6) Intelius, 7) Peekyou, 8) Rapleaf, and 9) Recorded Future.

An online advertising company agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it used “history sniffing” to secretly and illegally gather data from millions of consumers about their interest in sensitive medical and financial issues ranging from fertility and incontinence to debt relief and personal bankruptcy. The FTC settlement order bars the company, Epic Marketplace Inc., from continuing to use history sniffing technology, which allows online operators to “sniff” a browser to see what sites consumers have visited in the past.

A company that provides management services to more than 300 payday loan and check cashing stores, and an affiliated company that owns and operates several stores, will pay $101,500 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they violated federal law by allowing sensitive consumer information to be tossed into trash dumpsters.

Facial recognition technologies have been adopted in a variety of contexts, ranging from online social networks and mobile apps to digital signs, the FTC staff report states.  They have a number of potential uses, such as determining an individual’s age range and gender in order to deliver targeted advertising; assessing viewers’ emotions to see if they are engaged in a video game or a movie; or matching faces and identifying anonymous individuals in images. Facial recognition also has raised a variety of privacy concerns because – for example – it holds the prospect of identifying anonymous individuals in public, and because the data collected may be susceptible to security breaches and hacking.

The Federal Trade Commission will host a workshop on December 6, 2012, to explore the practices and privacy implications of comprehensive collection of data about consumers’ online activities. Entities such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), operating systems, browsers, social media, and mobile carriers have the capability to collect data about computer users across the Internet, beyond direct interactions between consumers and these entities. The workshop will bring together consumer protection organizations, academics, business and industry representatives, privacy professionals, and others to examine the collection and use of such data, its potential benefits, privacy concerns, and related issues. The workshop is free and open to the public.

Seven rent-to-own companies and a software design firm have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they spied on consumers using computers that consumers rented from them, capturing screenshots of confidential and personal information, logging their computer keystrokes, and in some cases taking webcam pictures of people in their homes, all without notice to, or consent from, the consumers.

As I read through the patents and patent applications discussed below, and the many more I did not include, I started to wonder whether anyone has any reasonable expectation of privacy at all any more. I am a big fan of the CBS drama Person of Interest, and the surveillance system from that show that ferrets out dangerous on both macro and micro levels doesn’t seem quite so far fetched. I suppose that is why the FTC is seeking comments on facial recognition technologies and the government is attempting to get its hands around the enormous issues and promulgate some rules or guidelines.