Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has very publicly gone for the jugular of Time Warner's America Online (AOL). The non-profit watchdog organization has filed a request with the Federal Trade Commission to investigate AOL and posted a proclamation on its website urging AOL users to "take action", after AOL incorrectly released search data from 658,000 members into the public domain.
The EFF version of taking action consists of customers ringing AOL to
voice their displeasure at having their privacy compromised and urging
their friends to do the same. However, there is not one word mentioned
on the EFF site about any possible legal redress for customers who may
have had their personal privacy compromised.
AOL has admitted its error and the event clearly contravenes the
company's own publicly stated privacy policy. In the vast majority of
cases, it is probable that the search data cannot be used to expose the
identity of users.
However, cases have already come to light where users' identities and
personal details and their search queries have been revealed to the
world. In such cases, users may have substantial claims against AOL for
damages with accompanying demands for compensation.
If lawyers in the land of litigation are not jumping out of the
woodwork trying to get class action suits happening already, they
probably soon will be. If or when that happens, other companies that
keep user logs will no doubt sit up and take notice.
It is unrealistic to expect the search companies not to keep logs of
user searches. Finely targeted advertising based on user search logs is
now a multi-billion dollar industry and it is what makes possible the
increasingly rich array of free services and applications that are now
available to web surfers.
That said, it is clear from the AOL fiasco that the legislative
processes governing the storage of user data by corporations are not
sufficient to ensure an adequate level of protection for the privacy of
users. This is something that needs to change and this may require new
and tighter laws.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
