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Does it Seem Like Google Follows You, and Google Spies On Where You’ve Been on the Web, Showing You Related Google Advertising? You’re Not Far Off!

Does it seem to you as if Google spies on where you’ve been on the web, showing you Google ads (you know, those “Ads by Google”) that are based on where you’ve just been, instead of where you are now? Are you starting to feel as if Google is evil, despite their “do no evil” mantra, using some sort of special Google spyware to show you Google advertising based on your travels across the Internet? Do you feel as if Google is following you around the web? Well, you’re not far off. Google is following you around, in the form of a cookie that they have trailing you. A cookie that tells Google where you’ve been, and Google then chooses which Google ads to show you based on that information. Most commonly, you will see ads advertising something in which you showed an interest previously, on another site, in an effort to rekindle your interest and induce you to buy. This is known as “retargeting”. You can opt out of this Google privacy invasion, which Google calls “interest-based advertising”, but you have to know how.

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New Facebook Privacy Settings Explained: This Week’s New Privacy Settings Making Control Simple, says Facebook.

When I was a child growing up in New England, we had a saying: If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute. The same, it seems, can be said for Facebook’s privacy policies. Barely 4 weeks ago, Facebook announced their new open graph platform that follows you across the web – a privacy policy that seems based on the less (privacy) is more (revenue) principle. A mere 4 months earlier, Facebook announced sweeping privacy policy changes that users found beyond confusing. And a few months before that Facebook announced privacy policy changes that allowed developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data! And now, just today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced yet another change to Facebook’s privacy policies and Facebook privacy settings system, this one, he promises, “making control simple.”

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Your Unique Browser Fingerprint Identifies You Even with Cookies Turned Off

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has just released the results of research which indicate that your browser creates a unique “browser fingerprint” which can be uniquely linked to you, thus creating a record of your browsing habits and where you’ve been on the Internet with your browser, even if you have cookies turned off in your browser. In fact, says the report, this non-cookie method for identifying users using their browser fingerprint with such browsers as IE and Firefox is effective as much as 94% of the time.

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Here is Exactly What Facebook’s New System is Sharing About You, and Where and How They Are Doing It

We take Facebook safety seriously. A few days ago in one of our articles on Facebook we told you about Facebook’s new open social graph and Facebook apps that allow Facebook to follow you around from site to site, sharing what you are doing, and how to opt out of it doing so – that is just one of the many Facebook risks you can read about here. (On an interesting sidenote, in researching this article we found that many people search for Facebook info and never find it because they misspell “Facebook” in a number of ways, including Facebok, Faceboo, Acebook, Fcebook, Fcebook, Faebook, Fasebook, Faccebook, Facebbook, Faacebook, Faecbook, Faceebook, Fcaebook, Facebookk, Facebooks, Ffacebook, Facebood, Facerbook, Faceboock, and our personal favorite, Fecebook.)

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Why You Need to Care About Facebook’s New Open Graph Platform with Social Plugins – The Social Graph that Follows You Everywhere

Facebook – the site that changes its interface, services, and values almost as often as we change our underwear (hint: daily), has once again announced a major change that affects all Facebook users – and users of other services – in a major way. This week’s announcement is that Facebook is now sharing it’s new “like” system with partners like Microsoft Fuse Docs, Pandora, and Yelp – and any other site that wants to feature the new Facebook social plugins – creating what Facebook calls a “social graph” or “open graph”. This means that when you “like” something on Facebook, that “like” will follow you around to Pandora, Yelp, and Microsoft Fuse Docs – and vice versa. The good news is that you can opt out of it (and we tell you how).

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Every Tweet You Ever Send Being Archived by the Library of Congress

Do you use Twitter? If so, every single message you send out publicly – every single Tweet – is being archived by the United States Library of Congress. Observers say that this is a move by the Library of Congress to preserve for posterity the current culture as it is being expressed through voices on Twitter, both famous and unknown

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At Last the Burning Question Answered: What Was Blake Robbins’ “Improper Behavior in His Home” that the School Spied on His Webcam? WebCamGate Hint: Mike and Ike Know

One of the burning questions of the entire “school spying on a student in his own home through the webcam in the school-provided laptop” fiasco – which was followed closely by the “school accuses student Blake Robbins of improper behavior in his own home based on photos taken through the webcam” debacle – is just what was the improper behavior with which they confronted Blake? Read on… (Hint: It has to do with his friends, Mike and Ikes. Yes, it’s true.) P.S. Folks in the area are already calling this “WebCamGate”.

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Facebook Applications Can Now Require Your Email Address

It’s no secret that Facebook has an.. interesting … view of user privacy. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zucker recently suggested that Facebook users (should) have no expectation of privacy. Now to add insult to the complete-lack-of-privacy injury, starting a few days ago, Facebook applications now have permission to grab your email address – that is to require that you divulge your email address before you can use their application.

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Web “Suicide Machine” Service that Helps You Unsub from All Social Media Gets Cease and Desist from Facebook

The so-called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – a service provided by Moddr that lets you delete all of your social media accounts at once (or as they put it, “delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego”) – has certainly gotten the attention of Facebook. It started with Facebook blocking the IP addresses of the social networking suicide machine and similar services, however now Facebook has taken the much more aggressive action of sending the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine a Cease and Desist letter. Which means that Facebook is prepared to sue someone for helping people who don’t want to be on Facebook close their Facebook accounts.

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New Facebook Privacy Settings Confounding, Consternating, and Concerning

We’ve received rafts of concerns about the newest Facebook Privacy Announcement and the new Facebook privacy policies – and even about Facebook’s privacy policies policies (like the policy of forcing you to revisit their privacy policies repeatedly, and requiring you to confirm what appear to be new settings or keep your “old settings” without giving you a chance to see or understand what your “old settings” were to start with).

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Yahoo “Spying Guide” Debunked – False Alarm Raised Over Allegation of ISP Spying Guides and Selling User Data

Take one part paranoia, one part zeal, two parts conspiracy theory, and someone with too much time on their hands, and what do you get? No, it’s not the sequel to Minority Report. It’s the allegation that Yahoo and other ISPs are spying on their users and selling their users’ information, with publication of the so-called “Yahoo Spying Guide”, and other ISP “Spying Guides” as “proof” that Yahoo and other ISPs have put a price on their own users’ heads.

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Google Search Results for Your Name Reveal Your Facebook Friends Even If Your Facebook Privacy Settings Restrict Your Profile!

Now this is new! If you have a Facebook account, searching for your name in Google will turn up not only a link to your Facebook page, but includes a list of your friends, as well! And that’s even if your privacy settings on Facebook are set to disallow public access, such as the “only My Networks and Friends can see my profile and personal info” settings.

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Example of Real Facebook Ad Mentioning a Friend Who is a “Fan” of the Advertiser

Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately (stay tuned for our upcoming story on the woman who was arrested for poking someone on Facebook!), and there is increasing awareness over just how intrusive and invading of their users’ privacy many of their money-making practices are, such as using their users (you and your Facebook friends) in their Facebook advertising. Here’s a real-life example of someone being used in Facebook ads, and information on how to opt out and stop Facebook from doing it to you.

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Rocky Mountain Bank Accidentally Sends Confidential Customer Info for 1325 Customers to Unknown Gmail Address

Recently an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming followed up on a request by a customer to email loan documents to a Gmail address. Unfortunately, after doing so, the employee realized that they had emailed the documents to the wrong Gmail address. Oops. Not only that, but they had accidentally included a file containing the identities, addresses, loan information, and tax identification information of more than 1300 Rocky Mountain Bank customers – 1325 to be exact. OOPS. All to a Gmail address belong to nobody-knows-who (presumably the error occurred when the Rocky Mountain Bank employee typoed the Gmail address).

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Facebook Opens Up YOUR Inbox and the Email You Send to Others for Data Mining

While this was announced last month, nobody really noticed it until this week. Facebook has created new features that allow developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data. In addition to the content of your email, it allows applications to make note of who are the recipients of a mail thread, and the time and date of the emails.