Online privacy

The primary purpose of Californians for Consumer Privacy, an advocacy group formed by San Francisco real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart, is to push for a ballot initiative adding restrictions on companies that profit from the collection of personal data.But each time someone visits the organization's website, software gleans what information it can about her, then sends that information to Facebook, including her IP address, what web pages she was on before and after visiting, and so on.

Google is removing anonymized and encrypted user IDs from DoubleClick data transfer starting May 25, to align its data practices with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The changes apply to all companies using the DoubleClick ID feature. The data remains accessible to advertisers, but the move makes Google the gatekeeper of the data to prevent data sharing and requires advertisers to use its platforms and tools.

Facebook’s failure to compel Cambridge Analytica to delete all traces of data from its servers – including any “derivatives” – enabled the company to retain predictive models derived from millions of social media profiles throughout the US presidential election, the Guardian can reveal. Leaked emails reveal that when Cambridge Analytica told Facebook almost a year before the election that it had deleted data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users, it stopped short of agreeing to also erase derivatives of the data.

Facebook and Google must answer to new cops on the beat – a group of five fresh Washington regulators at the Federal Trade Commission who have the power to punish Silicon Valley if it misbehaves. But veterans of the 103-year old watchdog say that the agency increasingly runs the risk of being outmatched by the very tech giants it oversees without more cash, cutting-edge staff and stronger legal teeth.

Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission commissioners expressing concern that Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree with the Commission.

Politics and data are now inextricably linked. Cambridge Analytica was part of a world increasingly fueled by vast troves of personal data that billions of Internet users emit every day. Politicians now have the tools to target us each individually — based on data suggesting our race, religion, income, shopping habits, sexual orientation, medical concerns, personality traits, current location, past locations, pet preference or Zodiac sign if they'd like.

[Commentary] Our privacy framework no longer works. It must be changed. Now. Let’s begin by requiring “opt-in.” Before any business shares our personal data, we should have to grant it permission to do so, up-front and right at the outset. Then let’s simplify those ridiculous “terms of service agreements” that require our acceptance before we can even open up an app. Going a step further, let’s require any site that wishes to change its terms of service to notify us that it is doing so AND tell us what those changes will be, BEFORE they are implemented. Getting changes like these implemente

In recent months, executives at Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group, along with the Mercer family, have moved to created a new firm, Emerdata, based in Britain, according to British records. The new company’s directors include Johnson Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and business partner of Erik Prince. Prince founded the private security firm Blackwater, which was renamed Xe Services after Blackwater contractors were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians.

Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, is shutting down following disclosures about its use of Facebook data and the campaign tactics it pitched to clients. Apparently, the company decided to close its doors because it was losing clients and facing mounting legal fees in the Facebook investigation. The firm is shutting down effective May 2 and employees have been told to turn in their computers.

Al Franken returned to the spotlight to deliver a blistering rebuke of tech companies, specifically Facebook, over abuse of users privacy data while speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Lisbon, Portugal. He suggested Facebook was careless with users' information. "Facebook doesn't have to care about the privacy and security of their users' online information because there's no mass exodus when it violates those rules," said Franken.