A man named Roger was surprised to hear from an old college friend after all these years, reports the Philippine Daily Inquirer — and even more surprised to find out why. What she wanted to know was why he gave her number to an online lending company that was hounding him at that time. The company told her that he was…
Tag: data privacy
YouTube Promised To Halt Comments on Kids Videos Already. It Hasn’t.
A pedophilia scandal compelled YouTube to vow to suspend comments on videos with kids age 13 and younger. Six months later, comments are still easy to find. From a report: YouTube is about to reposition how its massive online video service treats clips for children. Following a record $170 million penalty, announced Wednesday, for violating kids’ data privacy, Google’s YouTube pledged…
Consumer Groups Seek To Defend California Data Privacy Law
A collection of consumer groups has written a letter to California lawmakers urging them to keep the strong protections in a state law due to take effect next year. From a report: The California law, if left largely as is, could usher in a range of new consumer protections. However, direct marketers and tech companies, working through various entities, have been…
Facebook Revenue Beats Estimates; Discloses Antitrust Probe
Facebook said on Wednesday that new data privacy rules and forthcoming privacy-focused product changes would slow its revenue growth and significantly raise expenses, driving down its shares in after-hours trade even as quarterly revenue topped estimates. Reuters reports: The outlook came soon after the company agreed to pay $5 billion to settle a data privacy probe and disclosed that it faces…
Microsoft Office 365: Now Illegal In Many Schools in Germany
“Schools in the central German state of Hesse [population: 6 million] have been told it’s now illegal to use Microsoft Office 365,” reports ZDNet:
The state’s data-protection commissioner has ruled that using the popular cloud platform’s standard configuration exposes personal information about students and teachers “to possible access by US officials”. That might sound like just another instance of European concerns about…
Brazil To Add Digital Data Protection To Fundamental Rights
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Brazilian Senate has approved a proposal to add protection of data in digital platforms to the list of fundamental rights and individual citizen guarantees set out in the country’s constitution. Brazil’s general data protection law was due to go live in February 2020 but a stopgap measure signed by former president Michel…
Cop Awarded $585K After ‘Dozens’ Of Police Officers Accessed Their DMV Data 500 Times
Slashdot reader Iwastheone shares a story from Ars Technica about what happened after Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources sent a privacy notification to a police officer in 2013: An employee had abused his access to a government driver’s license database and snooped on thousands of people in the state, mostly women. Krekelberg learned that she was one of them. When Krekelberg…