Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” third parties collecty user data from many popular and sites oftenallow this, even though theird privacy policies say they don’t share user data with “Web bugs from Googlw and its subsidiaries were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sitess and 88 percent of the approximately 400,0009 unique domains examined in the study,” the authorsw found. Sites with the most web bugs were forblogginyg — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itself was No. 3. Ashkanj Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshuaz Gomez ofthe university’s information school wrote the published Monday.
They analyzed privacy policies posteds on websites and found loopholes used by many site operatorse to allow third partiesa to still collect data on who views Theyalso found, for that although websites may reassure visitors that “we don’t share data with third parties,” thoswe third parties don’t include a company’s affiliates — Googl e (NASDAQ: GOOG), for example, has 137 subsidiary “The law on affiliate sharing generally is more than that on sharing user data with third party companies, the report said.
Companies controlling the top 50 busiest websited had an average of 297 affiliates meaning they could share user data with a lot ofothefr companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’s (NASDAQ: NWS), which has more than 1,5000 subsidiaries. (NYSE: BAC) in N.C., has more than 2,300 subsidiaries. “User do not know and cannot learmn the full range of affiliateds with which websites may share thereport said. Though many Internet users are familiawith “cookies” used to study theid surfing habits, they are less familiar with so-calle “web bugs,” which can’t be cleare d out of a web browser, since they are part of a website’e HTML code.
Since the web bugs are created directlh bythird parties, their use doesn’t strictly count as of data by the website’s though users concerned about privacy may be unimpressede by this technicality. “We believe that this practice contravenes users’ expectations; it makes littlee sense to disclaim formalinformation sharing, but allow functionally equivalent trackiny with third parties,” the report said. Who'ws in charge of privacy? Although surveys of internet users show peopleare “verty concerned about privacy and do not want websitexs to collect and share their personal information without sifting through privacy policied is not practical.
It would take 200 hours a year for a typical person to read the privacty policies of all the websites they for example. Thus “users have no practica l way of knowing with whom their data will be thereport said. On the policy front, the reportt finds “no one knows who is in chargse ofprotecting privacy” in the United People can complain to the Federal Traded Commission and other agencies, but even the FTC’es “principles for behavioral tracking make no mentiom of any enforcement or accountability.” A low numbetr of complaints to various agencies means consumers don’g really know where to complain, the repor t said.
The FTC looks at online privac more in termsof “harms” done to the report said, rather than also in terms of controol over personal information, which is what most users care The report makes several suggestions for including more aggressive action by the FTC to protect onliner privacy. It also calls for clearer privacy policies on websites, written so that averagre users can understand them. ’ws (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy policy, for example, when analyzedc for readability, was written at an equivaleny grade levelof 17.29. The average privac policy in the studty was written at a grade leveloof 13.83. The full study can be found .