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Google

has been accused of providing "incomplete and approximate" details raising "deep concerns about data protection and the respect of the European law".

It said that EU data protection laws place limits on such activities and proposed the following changes:

Google must "reinforce users' consent". It suggests this could be done by allowing its members to choose under what circumstances data about them was combined by asking them to click on dedicated buttons. The firm should offer a centralised opt-out tool and allow users to decide which of Google's services provided data about them. Google should adapt its own tools so that it could limit data use to authorised purposes. For example, it should be able to use a person's collated data to improve security efforts but not to target advertising.

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."

Under exi

sting privacy regulations, data protection supervision in EU countries must be conducted entirely independently of public authorities, and data protection controllers are not under the supervision of the European Commission. But the EU wants to weaken this policy and install itself as the data protection agencies' supervisory authority.

Free versions come with ads, but for a price, people can upgrade to the ad-free experience.

It's also possible that over the next five to 10 years, people's attitudes toward privacy and their data will change, and they'll be willing to share more personal information

Not everyone will want the same level of privacy,

"Do not track" seems like a clear, smart option to give consumers

Companies that provide free services, such as search engines or social networks, have to strike the right balance between respecting their customers' privacy concerns and serving advertisers.

It's also possible that over the next five to 10 years, people's attitudes toward privacy and their data will change, and they'll be willing to share more personal information, attached to their real-world identity, in exchange for more heavily customized computing experiences.

"Companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft are expanding their data collection techniques and they are not telling consumers and citizens why,"

The issue is about how you pay for online services and whether you are happy to sacrifice privacy for getting a service for free.

Google has changed its rules to allow information to be shared across all its services.

e believes it is the Europeans who are driving the policy debate, while the US strategy is to lobby the Europeans to accept the idea that there can be self-regulation, to trust the Googles and Facebooks and let this market grow.

The users themselves are problems as well," he says "Because they post, blog, tweet and do everything else also."

A lot of times most people click 'Yes' without reading what the privacy policies are” End Quote Frank Ahern

Most newspapers in the world are posting every newspaper they have ever printed, so people are finding that things they did in the past are being made public.

Internet privacy: Genuine concerns or paranoia?

This Internet was wild and wooly, unknown and unregulated

Like all new frontiers, cyberspace's early settlers declared themselves independent -- most famously in 1996, in cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace." Barlow asserted a realm beyond borders or government, rejecting the systems we use to run the physical universe. "Governments of the Industrial World," he reproached, "You have no sovereignty where we gather.… Cyberspace does not lie within your borders."

With the flip of a switch, three engineers had undone the work of more than 100 princes and diplomats.

. And the Internet -- this global resource, this wild space independent of states -- has made its mark on our neatly ordered world of nations.

are making it their policy and business to profile us in detai

And so we are stalked in the pursuit of marketing optimization.

(96 percent of it from advertising

Claire Walker, head of policy, at the charity Family Lives, which this week published a hard hitting report on online dangers, said parents would be more secure with an automatic block.

Jill Lesser, executive director of the Center for Copyright Information said in an interview with On the Media that the program is meant to abet the "casual infringer".

McSherry said that people engaged in wholesale commercial infringement wouldn't be fazed by the system because they are familiar with ways around the system.

The newest attempt to thwart illegal filesharing in the United States launched Monday and while the "six strikes and you're out" initiative seems to offer light penalties, digital rights advocates are concerned that it lacks transparency.

Copyright Alert System (CAS)

was devised by a coalition of internet service providers (ISPs), content owners and the US government to curb illegal downloading by alerting "casual infringers" when illegal filesharing is detected on their IP address.

Initially, the alerts are intended to be educational.

. If pirating continues to happen through the IP address, users will receive the message again, followed by messages that ask them to confirm they have seen the alerts. The fifth and sixth alert are called mitigation alerts and will temporarily slow users' internet speeds, depending on the ISP.

It's certainly not how we should be doing copyright policy,

it's a private copyright system and it doesn't have the protections and balances that the public copyright system has.

to ensure that it fairly identifies copyright violations is a former lobbyist

McSherry said that people engaged in wholesale commercial infringement wouldn't be fazed by the system because they are familiar with ways around the system

This failed to have a significant effect on pirating, and the industry stopped suing these type of casual users several years ago.

thanks to new policies implemented by supreme leader Kim Jong Un

that required foreigners to hand over their devices to authorities.

country has finally begun opening its doors to the outside world,

some 3G services, including text messaging, video calls, and subscriptions to state-run newspapers, but their mobile internet will remain tightly filtered, since North Koreans are still "governed by a separate set of telecommunication rules,"

two parallel internets — one for foreigners, one for citizens

visitors

about $300 for the cheapest 2GB data package.

On one hand it can be argued that Facebook is merely following industry trends; other social networks like Twitter have also banned apps that mimic their core functionality.

In short, Facebook is moving aggressively to block Twitter and other social media sites from establishing free-rider status on its site

Your individual account is probably worth very little to the service provider, so they'll have no qualms whatsoever with tinkering with the service or even making radical changes in their interests rather than yours. If you don't like it you're welcome to leave. You may well not be able to take your content and data with you, and even if you can, all your URLs will be broken.

if you really care about your site you need to run it on your own domain. You need to own your URLs. You'll have total control and no-one can take it away from you. You don't need anyone else. If you put the effort in up front it'll pay off in the long run.But it's no longer that simple.

Anyone who's ever run a website knows that building the site is one thing, but getting people to use it is quite another. The smaller your real-world presence the harder it is. If you're a national newspaper or a Hollywood star you probably won't have much trouble getting people to visit your website. If you're a self-employed plumber or an unknown blogger writing in your spare time, it's considerably harder.

Social networks have changed all that. Facebook and Twitter now wield enormous power over the web by giving their members ways to find and share information using tools that work in a social context.

Either way, your social network presence is more important than your own website.

But increasingly that freedom is just the freedom to be ignored, the freedom to starve.

es, that's nearly 34,000 new Facebook apps created in one day by customers of just one hosting company.

What Facebook is doing is very different. When it records our activity away from the Facebook site it's a third party to the deal. It doesn't need this data to run its own services.

orst o

all, the way Facebook collects and uses our data is both unpredictable and opaque. Its technology and policies move so quickly you'd need to be a technical and legal specialist and spend an inordinate amount of time researching Facebook's activities on an ongoing basis to have any hope of understanding what they're doing with your data.