Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” thirdf parties collect user data from manypopular websites, and sitea often allow this, even though their privacy policiex say they don’t share user data with “Web bugs from Google and its subsidiariez were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sitexs and 88 percent of the approximatelty 400,000 unique domains examined in the study,” the authorss found. Sites with the most web bugs were forbloggingh — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itself was No. 3.
Ashkaj Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshua Gomez ofthe university’sx information school wrote the study, published Monday. They analyzerd privacy policies posted on websites and found loopholed used by many site operators to alloaw third parties to still collect data on whoviewas pages. They also found, for that although websites may reassure visitorsthat “wre don’t share data with third parties,” those thirdr parties don’t include a company’s affiliates Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for example, has 137 subsidiary businesses.
“Thw law on affiliate sharing generally ismore permissive” than that on sharintg user data with third partyu companies, the report said. Companied controlling the top 50 busiestf websites had an average of 297affiliatesz each, meaning they could share user data with a lot of other companies. Popular site , for example, is ownedd by New York’s (NASDAQ: NWS), which has more than 1,500 (NYSE: BAC) in Charlotte, has more than 2,300 “Users do not know and cannor learn the full range of affiliates with whicg websites mayshare information,” the report said.
Though many Internef users are familiarwith “cookies” used to studg their surfing habits, they are less familiar with so-callee “web bugs,” which can’t be cleared out of a web since they are part of a website’s HTML Since the web bugs are create d directly by third parties, their use doesn’rt strictly count as “sharing” of data by the website’s though users concerned about privacg may be unimpressed by this technicality. “W e believe that this practicecontravenes users’ it makes little sense to disclaim formal information but allow functionally equivalent tracking with third the report said.
Who's in charge of privacy? Althougg surveys of internet users show peopleare “very concernedx about privacy and do not want websites to collectt and share their personal informationb without permission,” sifting through privacy policies is not It would take 200 hours a year for a typical perso n to read the privacuy policies of all the websites they for example. Thus “users have no practical way of knowinyg with whom their data willbe shared," the reportr said. On the polic y front, the report finds “no one knowa who is in charge ofprotecting privacy” in the Unitef States.
People can complain to the Federaol Trade Commission andother agencies, but even the FTC’s “principlez for behavioral tracking make no mentionm of any enforcement or accountability.” A low numbef of complaints to various agenciesz means consumers don’t really know where to the report said. The FTC lookss at online privacy more in termdsof “harms” done to consumers, the report said, rather than also in terms of controp over personal information, whichn is what most userw care about. The report makew several suggestionsfor improvement, including more aggressivde action by the FTC to protect onlin e privacy.
It also calls for clearer privacyy policieson websites, writtemn so that average users can understand them. ’e (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy for example, when analyzed for was written at an equivaleny grade levelof 17.29. The averagee privacy policy in the study was written at a grade leveolof 13.83. The full study can be found .