Responding to scrutiny from privacy activists

Published: 4 May 1999 y., Tuesday
As first reported by Wired News, Deja News has been stealthily recording the IP addresses of users who click a "mailto:" email link on a newsgroup posting. If the email_s sender had registered with Deja News, the company could associate the sender_s profile with the recipient_s email address. The company could even add details about the subject of the newsgroup message that prompted the email response. The potential for tracking correspondence proved worrisome to R. Smith -- the programmer who noticed the bug last weekend -- because Deja News archives messages from Usenet. The many thousands of discussion forums that make up Usenet are not proprietary to Deja News, which simply provides a Web gateway to the postings. The IP tracking also raised the hackles of privacy advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union, that was concerned that the company could be tracking private correspondence. But Deja News said Friday afternoon that it would head off any chance of that happening. "We have used none of this information for any purpose other than to better understand aggregate usage patterns," said Deja News CEO T. Phillips in an email to reporters. "However, we recognize the concern of our users over potential misuse. Therefore, we are implementing a plan to discontinue the collection of this data." Philips said the service had been collecting the data for about a year. He gave no indication as to when the practice will end. The Deja News privacy policy states that the company will "give notice to everyone prior to collecting any personally identifiable information." The company is a member of Truste, a nonprofit watchdog group that makes sure members adhere to its privacy policies. Truste said that it was investigating the IP tracking issue to see if there was any chance the company had violated its privacy-practices statement.
Šaltinis: Deja News
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

New report reveals consumer attitudes toward self-service technology

The Self-Service and Kiosk Association has published its 2009 Self-Service Consumer Survey, a comprehensive report that reveals what consumers like and dislike about self-service technology — and what they want more of. more »

“Gold-To-Go“ ATMs to hit Europe, Asia

Private investors should hold up to 15 percent of their wealth in physical gold, according to a German asset-management company that plans to set up 500 "Gold-To-Go" ATMs in Germany, Switzerland and Austria sometime this year. more »

New reports says U.S. FIs expect debit, ATM fraud to grow in 2009

ATM and debit card theft is expected to grow 10 percent to 14 percent this year, according to a survey of financial institutions that was released today. more »

Chocolate-powered racing car

Built from potatoes, steered with carrots and powered by chocolate. more »

Robot teacher wows Japan students

Students at a Tokyo elementary school are waiting quietly for a "special lecturer" in science class. But when they see "Saya", a robot relief teacher, the kids are pleasantly surprised. more »

E-readers - newspapers last best hope?

This week - the New York Times announced a deal with e-commerce giant Amazon timed to the release of its latest Kindle e-book device. more »

Wincor ATMs now housed in telephone booths in South Korea

Wincor Nixdorf AG and NICE Banking, an independent ATM deployer in South Korea, have partnered to grow a network of ATMs at sites owned by the country's top communications provider, Korea Telecom. more »

“Internet has to be free, but not regulation free” - Harbour on telecoms package

“The telecoms package has never been about anything to do with restrictions on the internet,” Malcolm Harbour told us ahead of Parliament's debate Tuesday on the telecoms package, which aims to reform the existing European electronic communications framework. more »

Ministerial Conference Safer Internet for Children

On 20 April 2009 the Prague Congress Centre will host a ministerial conference Safer Internet for Children, which is organised by the Ministry of the Interior in cooperation with the European Commission. more »

2008 was a year of security, payment card breaches, report says

Payment card breaches in 2008 led to the most compromises and security breaches of record in the last four years, according to a new report from Verizon Business. more »