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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Personal Details Exposed Via Biggest U.S. Websites - WSJ.com Wall Street Journal Article * JULY 30, 2010 Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry By JULIA ANGWIN and TOM MCGINTY The largest U.S. websites are installing new and intrusive consumer-tracking technologies on the computers of people visiting their sites—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time—a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. The tracking files represent the leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities, in real time. The Journal's study shows the extent to which Web users are in effect exchanging personal data for the broad access to information and services that is a defining feature of the Internet. In an effort to quantify the reach and sophistication of the tracking industry, the Journal examined the 50 most popular websites in the U.S. to measure the quantity and capabilities of the "cookies," "beacons" and other trackers installed on a visitor's computer by each site. Together, the 50 sites account for roughly 40% of U.S. page-views. It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for products that match your interests. The 50 sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files on a test computer used to conduct the study. Only one site, the encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, installed none. Twelve sites, including IAC/InterActive Corp.'s Dictionary.com, Comcast Corp.'s Comcast.net and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com, installed more than 100 tracking tools apiece in the course of the Journal's test. The Journal also surveyed its own site, WSJ.com, which doesn't rank among the top 50 by visitors. WSJ.com installed 60 tracking files, slightly below the 64 average for the top 50 sites. Some two-thirds of the tracking tools installed—2,224—came from 131 companies that, for the most part, are in the business of following Internet users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold. The companies that placed the most such tools were Google Inc., Microsoft. and Quantcast Corp., all of which are in the business of targeting ads at people online. Almost every major website you visit is tracking your online activity. Surfing the Internet kickstarts a process that passes information about you and your interests to tracking companies and advertisers. Google, Microsoft and Quantcast all said they don't track individuals by name and offer Internet users a way to remove themselves from their tracking networks. Comcast, MSN and Dictionary.com said they disclose tracking practices in their privacy policies, and said their visitors aren't identified by name. The state of the art is growing increasingly intrusive, the Journal found. Some tracking files can record a person's keystrokes online and then transmit the text to a data-gathering company that analyzes it for content, tone and clues to a person's social connections. Other tracking files can re-spawn trackers that a person may have deleted. To measure the sensitivity of the data gathered by tracking companies, the Journal created an "exposure index" for the top 50 sites. Dictionary.com ranked highest in exposing users to potentially aggressive surveillance: It installed 168 tracking tools that didn't let users decline to be tracked, and 121 tools that, according to their privacy statements, don't rule out collecting financial or health data. Dictionary.com attributed the number of tools to its use of many different ad networks, each of which puts tools on its site. Some of the tracking files identified by the Journal were so detailed that they verged on being anonymous in name only. They enabled data-gathering companies to build personal profiles that could include age, gender, race, zip code, income, marital status and health concerns, along with recent purchases and favorite TV shows and movies. The ad industry says tracking doesn't violate anyone's privacy because the data sold doesn't identify people by name, and the tracking activity is disclosed in privacy policies. And while many companies are involved in collecting, analyzing and selling the data, they provide a useful service by raising the chance Internet users see ads and information relevant to them personally. "We are delivering free content to consumers," says Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group of advertisers and publishers. "Sometimes it means that we get involved in a very complex ecosystem with lots of third parties." The growing use and power of tracking technology have begun to raise regulatory concerns. Congress is considering laws to limit tracking. The Federal Trade Commission is developing privacy guidelines for the industry. If "you were in the Gap, and the sales associate said to you, 'OK, from now on, since you shopped here today, we are going to follow you around the mall and view your consumer transactions,' no person would ever agree to that," Sen. George LeMieux, R-Florida, said this week in a Senate hearing on Internet privacy. Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com
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Stealth installs and adware come to Facebook * Alert * Print * Retweet * Facebook Apps secretly added to profiles By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author Posted in ID, 6th May 2010 19:00 GMT Free whitepaper – The Reg Guide to Solutions for the Virtual Era Updated Already under fire for taking liberties with users' privacy, Facebook was outed on Thursday as a distributor of unwanted applications, some of which install adware or are added to user profiles without permission. As noted earlier by PC World, the social networking site silently adds apps to profiles whenever a user is logged in and browses to certain sites. Facebook displays no dialogue box or notification window asking permission, and there is no easy way to opt out of the process. A second report by security researcher Gadi Evron found that Facebook is being used as a distribution platform for adware such as the FLV Direct media player. The software comes bundled with adware from something called Zugo Search, according to researchers from anti-virus provider Sunbelt Software. In a game of whack-a-mole, Facebook appears to be killing the links to the FLVDirect.exe download within hours of them being posted, but as soon as one goes down another seems to go up. To entice users to install the crapware, the come-ons include images of well-endowed cleavage in a pink bikini. Since its beginning, Facebook's philosophy with user privacy has been that it's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, and that's what seems to be going on here. Rather than seeking consent before installing apps from partners such as TechCrunch, CNET and The Washington Post, Facebook just adds them to user profiles. It's hard for users to make informed privacy decisions when they aren't even aware it's happening. What's more, short of logging out of Facebook each time before browsing to another site, there doesn't appear to be much users can do to stop the stealth installs. (We asked Facebook PR if there was an easier way to prevent them, but we never got a response.) As we pointed out, Facebook appears to be trying to block the adware links. But with more than 1 million reported developers, it's questionable how effective that strategy will be. As Evron notes, Facebook has long been premised on the idea that anyone can write apps. "This openness has been an asset to the entire community, but unfortunately, when a society grows and criminal elements present themselves, systems sometimes can't scale," he writes. "Some freedoms have to go if the system itself is to survive." ® Update After this posting was published, a Facebook spokesman sent the following statement: Application developers must comply with our Developer Principles and Policies, which require that applications provide a trustworthy experience. We have a dedicated team that conducts spot reviews of top applications and of many other applications, including looking at the data they need to run the application versus the data they gather. This team regularly enforces our guidelines and disables applications that we find to be in violation. There was a bug that was showing applications on a user’s Application Settings page that the user hadn’t authorized. No information was shared with those applications, and the applications did not appear to anyone but the user. This bug has been fixed.
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