Group items tagged

The FBI's files concern Swartz's involvement in accessing the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) documents. In pursuit of their investigation, the FBI had collected his personal information and was surveilling an Illinois address where he had his IP address registered. Aaron H. Swartz FBI File by Daniel Wright

One page reads: "Washington Field Office requests that the North RA attempt to locate Aaron Swartz, his vehicles, drivers license information and picture, and others. Since Swartz is the potential subject of an ongoing investigation, it is requested that Swartz not be approached by agents." The FBI also collected information from his social networking profiles, including Facebook and Linkedin. The latter proved to be a catalog of his many notable accomplishments, which include being a co-founder of Reddit, a founder of a website to improve the government, watchdog.net and as metadata adviser at Creative Commons.

Information from a New York Times article about his Pacer hack was also included in the files, though strangely, since the article can still be read online, the name of the article's other subject, Carl Malamud, was blocked out.Hacking collective Anonymous released a State Department database Monday in memory of Swartz. The files included employees' personal information such as addresses, phone number and emails.

Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, says that analysis of Google's terms and conditions relating to its Google Play store and Google Wallet transaction system (used for buying apps) doesn't show any clauses where users are specifically told that their emails will be sent on to the developer. He also warns that developers could use that information to "track and harass" people who have given apps low ratings or requested refunds. And hackers – or malicious developers – could create personalised emails to send out to people to steal passwords (phishing) or install "updates" that were actually malware.

Google says it has to provide some location data about which country apps are bought in so developers can calculate the correct amount of tax to pay. But that does not explain why it passes on buyers' names and email addresses, which together with a postcode could be used to identify a person's location and address."Google's prior privacy blunders have put [it] under higher scrutiny," Edelman says, pointing to the 20-year consent order with the US Federal Trade Commission that Google signed in March 2011 in the wake of its Buzz social network fiasco – followed by a record $22.5m fine in August 2012 for hacking Apple users' browsers to install tracking cookies. It has also been fiercely criticised in Europe for its changes in March 2012 to its privacy policies, which data protection chiefs said could mean "uncontrolled" use of personal data.

Eric Butler, a freelance software developer of the Tapchat and Farebot apps, tweeted in July 2012 "I wonder if most Android users realise that when you buy an app in the Play Store the seller [of the app] can see your name, email address and phone."Following the row, he has noted on his blog that "Because the entire experience of purchasing Android apps is so sloppy, it's not unreasonable to assume that this privacy issue was actually an oversight." But, he says, "Google should follow Apple's lead and offer users and developers better privacy protection."

Another developer, Jesse Wilson, pointed out the same problem in November on Google+, and was quickly echoed by Chris Lacy, who said that "as a developer I never asked for this information, I have no need for it, and I simply do not want to be a custodian of such information."Lacy added that "As a consumer, this is distressing on many levels: there is no fair warning that this information will be transferred … trusting my personal information to Google is one thing. But with this system, users are unknowingly having to trust their information to a third party. There's no way to know what security measures that third party might have in place." He added that it meant that the app developer "has gained my personal information without requesting the appropriate permissions via the app."

Google has said that passing on the details does not breach its privacy conditions. In a quote to Siliconvalley.com, a representative told the site that "Google Wallet shares the information necessary to process a transaction, which is clearly spelled out in the Google Wallet privacy notice."

Facebook has dealt with many privacy issues in its nine years on the Web, but unlike most of the past issues that deal with broader concerns like “data mining,” the new promoted posts service could have a greater impact on individuals, like its increased potential for cyberbullying.One problem is your friend doesn’t need your explicit permission to promote your posts. So, for instance, if one of my friends from college decides to promote an old embarrassing photo of me, I won’t be able to prevent the picture from getting to the top of the News Feed for a large percentage of my friends.

We’ve reached out to Facebook to talk about any safeguards that will be put in place to prevent cyber bullying, but they didn’t get back to us by the time this article went up.In addition, there’s no way to determine who promoted the post, so, as TechCrunch notes, a friend promoting an article written by me could be perceived as a shameless plug by me in an effort get more of my friends to check out my article (which is totally true by the way).However, Facebook notes there are a lot of benefits to the service. A Facebook spokesperson released a statement to AllFacebook on Friday, describing the feature:

“If your friend is running a marathon for charity and has posted that information publicly, you can help that friend by promoting their post to all of your friends,” the post said. “Or if your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in news feed and more people notice it.”As you can see, Facebook’s new feature has a number of potentially beneficial uses like fundraising for a friends’ charity or publicizing events to increase attendance, and can even make somewhat tedious tasks like finding an apartment be a little less difficult.

Facebook will want to monitor this new feature to see how it’s used. It has the potential to be really lucrative and turn Facebook into a network more like Reddit, where popular posts dominate the front page on a merit basis, but it could be used maliciously to embarrass or play pranks on friends – only time will tell. Facebook is planning on emphasizing its mobile platform in 2013, and it will be interesting to see if the Promoted Posts feature will be included in its mobile plans. In the company’s most recent earnings report, Facebook said mobile ad revenue accounts for 23 percent of its total ad revenue. To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.com