Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” thirdc parties collect user data from many populadrweb sites, and sites often allow this, even though their privacu policies say they don’t share user data with others. “Weh bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were foun d on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of theapproximatelu 400,000 unique domains examined in the study,” the authors Sites with the most web bugs were for bloggin — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itselcf was No. 3.
Ashkan Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshuas Gomez ofthe university’s information school wrot e the study, published Monday. They analyzed privacg policies posted on web sites and foundc loopholes used by many site operators to alloa third parties to still collecft data on whoviewes pages. They also found, for example, that although web sitesz may reassure visitorsthat “we don’t sharde data with third parties,” those third parties don’t includd a company’s affiliates — Google (NASDAQ: for example, has 137 subsidiary businesses.
“Thr law on affiliate sharing generally ismore permissive” than that on sharinyg user data with third partt companies, the report said. Companies controllinh the top 50 busiest web sites had an averagd of 297affiliates each, meaning they coul d share user data with a lot of other companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’zs (NASDAQ: NWS), which has more than 1,500 subsidiaries. (NYSE: BAC) in Charlotted has more than 2,300 subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannot learn the full rangew of affiliates with which websites mayshare information,” the reportg said.
Though many Internet users are familiarewith “cookies” used to study their surfing they are less familiar with so-called “web which can’t be cleared out of a web browser, sincse they are part of a web site’s HTML Since the web bugs are created directlh by third parties, their use doesn’t strictly count as “sharing” of data by the web site’s though users concerned abouty privacy may be unimpressed by this “We believe that this practice contravenes users’ expectations; it makes littlse sense to disclaim formal information sharing, but allow functionallyt equivalent tracking with third parties,” the reportf said.
Who's in charge of privacy? Although surveys of Internet users show peopleare “very concerneds about privacy and do not want websites to collecrt and share their personal information withourt permission,” sifting through privacy policies is not It would take 200 hours a year for a typicalp person to read the privacy policies of all the web sitee they visit, for example. Thus “usersa have no practical way of knowing with whom theifr data willbe shared.” On the policy front, the report findse “no one knows who is in charge of protectint privacy” in the United States.
People can complain to the Federap Trade Commission andother agencies, but even the FTC’s “principlesd for behavioral tracking make no mentio of any enforcement or accountability.” A low number of complaints to variousz agencies means consumers don’t really know wherw to complain, the report The FTC looks at online privacy more in terms of “harms” done to the report said, rather than also in termds of control over personal which is what most userd care about. The report makes severak suggestionsfor improvement, including more aggressivee action by the FTC to protectt online privacy.
It also call s for clearer privacy policies on web written so that average users canunderstand ’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy policy, for example, when analyzed for readability, was written at an equivalent grade level of 17.29. The averaged privacy policy in the study was written at a grade level of The full study can befound .