Posts Tagged ‘privacy’
February 14th, 2009 | 
Author: The FCC has privacy guideines, not laws concerning privacy policies on web sites. Recently they’ve made a few changes to the guideines:
- Extended these privacy guidelines to include ISP’s and mobile phone service providers
- Now urges websites to tell consumers that data is being collected during their searches and to allow them to opt out
- Recommends that mobile companies and Internet service providers also inform customers about data collection and allow users to decline
Pretty lame if you ask me. Especially since there is no reason for companies to comply. Currently internet privacy laws state that yo can basically do whatever you want with data collected from users if you vaguely describe what you are doing with it and how you are protecting the data. The only time you can get in trouble with the law is if you fail to follow your own vague privacy statement, or if you don’t have one and share this data.
At Dream designs we strive to go way beyond these guidelines. One way we do this is by not storing this kind of information. Then it can’t be shared. In some instances we do have to store this information temporarily. For instance if you fill out a contact form, the information you submit is stored until we view it and do something with it, like respond to your question. Then this information is deleted. If you become a client is another example. Obviously we have to store your name and contact info so I can communicate with you about the services you’ve purchased (“Your web site is done early and under budget sir”). Hard to do business without doing this, wouldn’t you say?
That why we have a great privacy policy.
In the future we are going to draft the perfect privacy policy and try ot gain industry wide support for it. It’s a bigger task than you would think. Look for it in the near future.
Posted in Client News, Florida Web Design Marketplace, Internet | 
Tags: fed, government, privacy | 
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America has very little privacy laws. Even when it comes to your private health info or private banking info, the law states companies can share it with whomever they like as long as they vaguely describe the manner in which they will give it away or sell it. Evidently these lax privacy laws aren’t enough for the Cable TV industry.
There are some cases where past abuses have been so fraudulent that Congress has acted and specifically denied the sharing of personally identifying information. One such story is with the Cable TV industry. They have specifically forbidden by law from sharing subscribers’ personal information with other parties in limited instances. to be clear, they still share this personally identifying information with lots of companies that they have certain types of relationships with, they just can’t sell it on the open market. They can do even that if they can trick or persuade a citizen into “opting-in” to this sharing. The FCC is to blame for this lame privacy “protection” law.
These freedoms to do almost anything with our personally identifying info like phone numbers, call logs, etc, apparently this isn’t enough for the Cable industry. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a petition by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which argued that federal rules on telecom carriers’ use of customer data violated free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution, federal law or both.
Well at least a few judges are trying to stick up for the citizens. Now what can we do about our lawmakers?
A watch dog group asked Google to put up or shut on the whole personal data storage issue.
The nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog asked on Friday that Google give users of its search engine the ability to “opt out” of leaving personal data, such as IP addresses, on Google’s servers.
“Many people don’t understand that the kind of unnoticed conversations that are going on between them and [Google's servers],” said John Simpson, policy advocate at Consumer Watchdog. “Some of that can provide a useful, helpful service to the user, but people need to know what they’re providing and made informed judgments about whether they want to or not.”