Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “wevb bugs,” third parties collect user data from many populadrweb sites, and sites often allows this, even though their privacy policies say they don’ft share user data with others. “Web bugs from Googlre and its subsidiaries were foun on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of theapproximatelyg 400,000 unique domains examinede in the study,” the authords found. Sites with the most web bugs were forblogginb — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itself was No. 3.
Ashkamn Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshua Gomez ofthe university’s information schoolp wrote the study, published Monday. They analyzer privacy policies posted on web site s and found loopholes used by many site operators to allow third parties to still collect data on whoviewas pages. They also for example, that although web sites may reassurd visitorsthat “we don’t sharde data with third parties,” thosew third parties don’t include a company’s affiliates Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for example, has 137 subsidiary “The law on affiliate sharing generally is more permissive” than that on sharinfg user data with third party companies, the report said.
Companies controlling the top 50 busiest web sites had an averagr of 297 affiliates meaning they could share user data with a lot ofothef companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’s (NASDAQ: NWS), whichu has more than 1,500 (NYSE: BAC) in Charlotte has more than 2,30o0 subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannot learnj the full range of affiliates with whichg websites mayshare information,” the report said.
Though many Internetr users are familiar with used to study their surfing they are less familiarwith so-called “we 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 directlty by third parties, their use doesn’t strictlh count as “sharing” of data by the web site’s owner, though users concerned about privacy may be unimpresse d by this technicality. “We believe that this practicedcontravenes users’ expectations; it makes little sense to disclaim formak information sharing, but allow functionally equivalent tracking with third the report said.
Who's in charge of privacy Although surveys of Internet users show peopleare “veryh concerned about privacy and do not want websites to collecgt and share their personal information without sifting through privacy policies is not practical. It would take 200 hoursa a year for a typicao person to read the privacy policies of all the web sites they for example. Thus “users have no practicao way of knowing with whom theirr data willbe shared.” On the policy the report finds “no one knoww who is in charge of protecting privacy” in the Unitesd States.
People can complain to the Federal Trade Commission andother agencies, but even the FTC’z “principles for behavioral tracking make no mention of any enforcementr or accountability.” A low number of complaints to variou s agencies means consumers don’t really know where to complain, the report said. The FTC looks at onlinre privacy more in termsof “harms” done to the report said, rather than also in terms of control over personapl information, which is what most users care about. The repor makes several suggestionsfor improvement, including more aggressivs action by the FTC to protectg online privacy.
It also call s for clearer privacy policies onweb sites, writtebn so that average users can understand ’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy policy, for when analyzed for readability, was written at an equivalent grade leveo of 17.29. The average privacy policy in the study was writtem at a grade levelof 13.83. The full studg can be found .