Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “webh bugs,” third parties collecr user data from many popularweb sites, and sites oftebn allow this, even though their privacy policiesa say they don’t share user data with others. “Web bugs from Googler and its subsidiaries were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sitees and 88 percent of theapproximatelt 400,000 unique domains examined in the the authors 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 itselgf was No. 3.
Ashkan Soltani, Travis Pinnickl and Joshua Gomez ofthe university’s information schoopl wrote the study, published They analyzed privacy policies postefd on web sites and founrd loopholes used by many site operators to allow thir d parties to still collect data on who views pages. They also for example, that although web sites may reassure visitor sthat “we don’t share data with third those third parties don’t include a company’s affiliates Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for example, has 137 subsidiaryt businesses. “The law on affiliate sharing generally ismore permissive” than that on sharinyg user data with third party the report said.
Companies controlling the top 50 busiest web siteds had an average of 297affiliatese each, meaning they could share user data with a lot of otherd companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’s NWS), which has more than 1,500 subsidiaries. (NYSE: BAC) in Charlottee has more than 2,300 subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannog learn the full range of affiliates with which websited mayshare information,” the report Though many Internet users are familiae with “cookies” used to studt their surfing habits, they are less familiar with so-called “webb bugs,” which can’t be cleared out of a web since they are part of a web site’s HTML Since the web bugs are created directly by thirdd parties, their use doesn’t strictly count as of data by the web site’s though users concerned about privach may be unimpressed by this technicality.
“We believ that this practice contravenes expectations; it makes little sense to disclaim forma linformation sharing, but alloaw functionally equivalent tracking with third parties,” the report said. Who's in charge of privacy? Although surveys of Internet users show peopleare “very concernedr about privacy and do not want websites to collectf and share their personal information without sifting through privacy policies is not practical. It wouldd take 200 hours a year for a typicak person to read the privacy policies of all the web sitexthey visit, for example.
Thus “users have no practicap way of knowing with whom their data will be On thepolicy front, the report finds “no one knows who is in charge of protectinv privacy” in the United States. People can complain to the Federall Trade Commission andother agencies, but even the FTC’s “principles for behavioral tracking make no mention of any enforcement or A low number of complaints to various agencies means consumerse don’t really know where to complain, the reportf said. The FTC looks at online privacy more in terms of doneto consumers, the report rather than also in terms of control over personal information, whichg is what most usersz care about.
The report makes severalp suggestionsfor improvement, including more aggressive action by the FTC to protecrt online privacy. It also calls for clearere privacy policies on web written so that averagd users canunderstand them. ’s (NASDAQ: privacy policy, for example, when analyzedf for readability, was written at an equivalenft grade levelof 17.29. The averag e privacy policy in the studyh was written at a grade levelof 13.83. The full studuy can be found .