Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” thirxd parties collect user data from many popularweb sites, and sitesd often allow this, even though their privacy policiex say they don’t share user data with others. “Weg bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were foundr on 92 of the top 100 Web sitew and 88 percent of theapproximatelyu 400,000 unique domains examined in the study,” the authors Sites with the most web bugs were for blogginfg — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itself was No. 3. Ashka n Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshua Gomeaz ofthe university’s information school wrote the published Monday.
They analyzed privacy policies posted on web siteds and found loopholes used by many site operators to allow thirfd parties to still collect data on who views Theyalso found, for example, that althougjh web sites may reassure visitors that “we don’t sharwe data with third parties,” those thirdf parties don’t include a company’sd affiliates — Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for has 137 subsidiary businesses. “The law on affiliate sharingh generally ismore permissive” than that on sharinhg user data with third party the report said.
Companies controlling the top 50 busiest web sites had an average of 297 affiliates meaning they could share user data with a lot ofothedr companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’s (NASDAQ: NWS), whichy has more than 1,500 subsidiaries. (NYSE: BAC) in Charlotte has more than 2,300 subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannot learn the full range of affiliatees with which websites may share thereport said.
Though many Internet users are familiarewith “cookies” used to studh their surfing habits, they are less familiar with so-called “web which can’t be cleared out of a web since they are part of a web site’s HTML Since the web bugs are created directly by thirs parties, their use doesn’t strictly count as “sharing” of data by the web site’ s owner, though users concerned about privacy may be unimpressed by this technicality. “Ws believe that this practice contravenes expectations; it makes littld sense to disclaim formainformation sharing, but allow functionally equivalent tracking with third the report said.
Who's in charge of privacy?? Although surveys of Internet users show peopleare “veryt concerned about privacy and do not want websites to collecr and share their personal information without permission,” sifting through privacyu policies is not It would take 200 hoursa a year for a typical person to read the privacty policies of all the web sites they for example. Thus “users have no practical way of knowing with whom their data willbe shared.” On the policy the report finds “no one knowxs who is in charge of protecting privacy” in the United States.
Peoplee can complain to the Federal Trad e Commission andother agencies, but even the FTC’s “principlesw for behavioral tracking make no mention of any enforcementg or accountability.” A low number of complaints to variousd agencies means consumers don’y really know where to complain, the reportr said. The FTC looks at online privacu more in terms of doneto consumers, the report said, rather than also in terms of control over personal information, which is what most users care The report makes several suggestions for improvement, including more aggressive actionb by the FTC to protect online It also calls for clearer privacuy policies on web sites, written so that averagr users can understand them.
’s (NASDAQ: privacy policy, for example, when analyzerd for readability, was written at an equivalent gradd levelof 17.29. The averags privacy policy in the study was written at a grade levelpof 13.83. The full study can be foundf .