Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Given the importance of privacy self-help—that is, setting your browser to control what it reveals about you when you surf the Web—I was concerned to hear that Google, among others, had circumvented third-party cookie blocking that is a default setting of Apple’s Safari browser. Jonathan Mayer of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society published a [...]
[UPDATE Feb. 2012: This little essay eventually led to an 80-page working paper, "Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle."] In this essay, I will suggest that (1) while “moral panics” and “techno-panics” are nothing new, their cycles seem to be accelerating as new communications and information networks and platforms [...]
You have to read all the way to the end to get exactly what the New York Times is getting at in its Sunday editorial, “Netizens Gain Some Privacy.” Congress should require all advertising and tracking companies to offer consumers the choice of whether they want to be followed online to receive tailored ads, and [...]
Via @csoghoian (who can be wrathful if you don’t attribute), Adobe buries the lede in its blog post about privacy improvements to the Flash player. They’re working with the most popular browser vendors on integrating control of “local shared objects”—more commonly known as “Flash cookies”—into the interface. Users control of Flash cookies will soon be [...]
Recent revelations about Microsoft’s internal debate over Internet Explorer’s handling of tracking cookies, as chronicled by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, have prompted harsh criticism from self-described privacy groups, who’ve called on Congress to investigate Microsoft’s actions. But as Jim Harper pointed out in an excellent WSJ essay, Web users stand to lose [...]
I have a piece on Internet privacy in the Wall Street Journal today. It’s one side of a “debate” on Internet privacy and tracking. I say be careful what you give up if you thwart online tracking—personalization, free content, and other goodies may go by the wayside. My “opponent” is Nicholas Carr, whose identity and [...]
Today’s Washington Post has a story entitled U.S. Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears. It’s about the reversal of an ill-conceived policy adopted nine years ago to limit the use of cookies on federal Web sites. In case you don’t already know this, a cookie is a short string of text that a server sends a [...]
Chris Soghoian has responded to my recent post lauding his Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (or “TACO” – documented and downloadable here). We’re agreed in the main on user empowerment. The interesting stuff is on the margin: He disagrees with me that blocking third party cookies as I do (and he does too) is a satisfactory [...]
What a victory for privacy and personal responsibility is Chris Soghoian’s Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (or “TACO” – documented and downloadable here). It signals to the 27 ad networks with well-configured opt-out cookies that you don’t want them to track you. It’s a technical solution that empowers (and places responsibility with) the user to exercise [...]
As noted in the first installment of our “Privacy Solution Series,” we are outlining various user-empowerment or user “self-help” tools that allow Internet users to better protect their privacy online-and especially to defeat tracking for online behavioral advertising purposes. These tools and methods form an important part of a layered approach that we believe offers [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
