Cocoon

NYTimes.com is hosting another series of TimesOpen events. In our third event of 2011, we have assembled leaders in Internet advertising, Internet privacy services, government privacy policy, mobile technologies' effects on privacy, and computational social science to explore and discuss the tradeoffs between privacy and personalization in the digital apps we use.

EFF, however, is unequivocal in stating, "Facebook can track web browsing history without cookies." "Facebook is able to collect data about your browser - including your IP address and a range of facts about your browser - without ever installing a cookie. They can use this data to build a record of every time you load a page with embedded Facebook content," added the EFF.

Here is the video --I find it offensive that a billionaire founder, speaking at Davos - the world's most discriminative "old boys' network" event, held each year in the Swiss Alps - ridicules your concerns in such a condescending way.

- Checking this out for potential blog post -- the founder of LinkedIn, the largest social network for professional people in the world says "all these concerns about privacy tend to be old people issues."

It's clear that established sites want to distance themselves from supercookies and what they represent. But what's not clear is what firms are still using them and what they can do once installed on your computer. The difficulty with monitoring is that the bit of code dropped into your web browsers for the "super" version of cookies is difficult to delete and can actually reappear elsewhere on your computer if you do delete them - and they track your use of other sites. The cookies most of us are used to dealing with simply tell sites you've been there before so they can remember your preferences and deliver behavioral advertising.

Ten consumer and privacy groups have joined Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Tex., in calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate new sharing mechanisms designed to accelerate the collection and dispersal of information about Facebook users' Internet activities.

You can search via tags such as "privacy"

Proving that most malicious hackers are more than happy to employ time-tested tactics instead of developing sophisticated new techniques and tools, Symantec has reported a huge spike in generic polymorphic malware (malware that changes shape to bypass detection) spread via good old fashioned socially engineered email messages.

Two days ago, Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic wrote a blog post heavy in technical language that amounted to one important thing: Facebook is watching, recording and tracking you as you browse the internet … when you are logged out.  - note: this is a long process that you have to go through when you could just use Cocoon - this is why we need a "FAQ" on how Cocoon handles these cookies...

Internet companies like Google and Facebook stand to make billions by using users' data to predict buying behavior and suggest products to them.

The Wall Street Journal announced last night that it has "revised its website privacy policy" in order to "allow the site to connect personally identifiable information with Web browsing data without user consent."

For the past three years, a highly encrypted computer worm called Conficker has been spreading rapidly around the world. As many as 12 million computers have been infected with the self-updating worm, a type of malware that can get inside computers and operate without their permission.

this past weekend, the online security and privacy community was abuzz with another big Facebook story: allegations from Australia-based entrepreneur and hacker Nik Cubrilovic that "Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit."

More on Facebook tracking from CBC Dan Misener - this is a podcast

Beijing's efforts to suppress information are beginning to produce stresses on its political system that will have lasting repercussions as more and more Chinese grow frustrated with their own government's ''Great Firewall of China.'' China's suppression of news regarding the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, cyber attacks on Google and repeated harassment of those who voice their opinion on the Internet are but a few illustrations

This document is a deliverable for the PrimeLife project and describes three privacy enhancing Web browser extensions.

A pair of researchers have unveiled a serious new attack on web browser security.

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) is a Washington, DC based think tank that seeks to advance responsible data practices. The forum is led by Internet privacy experts Jules Polonetsky and Christopher Wolf and includes an advisory board comprised of leading figures from industry, academia, law and advocacy groups.

The Federal Trade Commission announced that it will host a workshop on December 8, 2011, on the privacy and security issues raised by the increasing use of facial recognition technology.

The biggest single data breach in the report occurred last July, when South Shore Hospital in South Weymouth said it lost 14 years' worth of records on 800,000 patients, employees, volunteers, and vendors. The hospital blamed an outside data management company for losing a batch of records they had been ordered to destroy.