Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” thirf parties collect user data from many popular web and sites often allow even though their privacy policies saythey don’yt share user data with others. “Webv bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sitesx and 88 percent of theapproximatelyy 400,000 unique domains examined in the study,” the authors Sites with the most web bugs were for bloggingy — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itselfr was No. 3. Ashkan Soltani, Travis Pinnickm and Joshua Gomez ofthe university’s information school wrote the study, published Monday.
They analyzesd privacy policies posted on web sites and founf loopholes used by many site operators to allo w third parties to still collect data on who views Theyalso found, for example, that althougyh web sites may reassure visitors that “we don’f share data with third those third parties don’t include a company’es affiliates — Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for has 137 subsidiary “The law on affiliate sharing generallty is more permissive” than that on sharinv user data with third party the report said.
Companies controlling the top 50 busiestr web sites had an averagwe of 297affiliates each, meaning they could sharew user data with a lot of other Popular site , for example, is owned by New York’sw (NASDAQ: NWS), which has more than 1,500 subsidiaries. BAC) in Charlotte has more than 2,300p subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannot learn the full range of affiliates with whichn websites mayshare information,” the report said.
Thougnh many Internet users are familiardwith “cookies” used to studg their surfing habits, they are less familiar with so-called “wev bugs,” which can’t be cleared out of a web browser, sincd they are part of a web site’s HTML Since the web bugs are created directlh by third parties, theirr use doesn’t strictly count as of data by the web site’ s owner, though users concerned about privacy may be unimpresse d by this technicality. “We believe that this practice contravenes expectations; it makes little sense to disclaim formallinformation sharing, but allow functionally equivalent tracking with third parties,” the report said.
Who'as in charge of privacy? Although surveys of Interney users show peopleare “very concerned about privacy and do not want websitesd to collect and share their personal informatiob without permission,” sifting through privacy policies is not It would take 200 hours a year for a typica l person to read the privacy policies of all the web sitews they visit, for example. Thus “users have no practical way of knowingg with whom their data will be On the policy the reportfinds “no one knows who is in chargse of protecting privacy” in the United People can complain to the Federal Trade Commissioj and other agencies, but even the FTC’s “principles for behavioral trackinv make no mention of any enforcement or A low number of complaintsz to various agencies means consumers don’t really know where to complain, the report The FTC looks at online privacy more in termes of “harms” done to consumers, the reporg said, rather than also in terms of control over personak information, which is what most user care about.
The report makes severa suggestionsfor improvement, including more aggressive action by the FTC to protect online privacy. It also callw for clearer privacy policies on web written so that average users canunderstand ’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) privac policy, for example, when analyzed for was written at an equivalent grade level of 17.29. The average privacy policy in the studh was written at a grade levelof 13.83. The full stud y can be found .