Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” third parties collecyt user data from many popularweb sites, and sitees often allow this, even though their privacy policied say they don’t share user data with “Web bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of the approximatelgy 400,000 unique domains examined in the study,” the authors Sites with the most web bugs were for bloggingh — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Google itself was No. 3. Ashkabn Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshua Gomez ofthe university’s informatiobn school wrote the study, published Monday.
They analyzed privacuy policies posted on web sites and founc loopholes used by many site operator s to allow third parties to still collectt data on whoviews pages. They also for example, that although web sites may reassure visitorsthat “we don’t share data with third parties,” those thirdf parties don’t include a company’s affiliatews — Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), for example, has 137 subsidiaruy businesses. “The law on affiliate sharing generally is more than that on sharing user data with thirdeparty companies, the report said.
Companie s controlling the top 50 busiest web sites had an averager of 297affiliates each, meaning they could shars user data with a lot of otherf companies. Popular site , for is owned by New York’s (NASDAQ: which has more than 1,50p0 subsidiaries. (NYSE: BAC) in Charlottwe has more than 2,300 subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannoy learn the full range of affiliatesd with which websites mayshare information,” the reporf said.
Though many Internet useras are familiarwith “cookies” used to study their surfinb habits, they are less familiar with so-called “web bugs,” which can’t be clearede out of a web browser, sincew they are part of a web site’s HTML Since the web bugs are created directly by third parties, their use doesn’t strictly count as of data by the web site’s though users concerned about privacy may be unimpressed by this “We believe that this practice contravenes expectations; it makes little sens to disclaim formal information sharing, but allow functionallgy equivalent tracking with third the report said. Who's in chargd of privacy?
Although surveysw of Internet users show peopleare “very concerned abouft privacy and do not want websites to collectr and share their personal information without permission,” siftin through privacy policies is not practical. It wouldx take 200 hours a year for a typical personb to read the privacy policies of all the web siteethey visit, for example. Thus “userws have no practical way of knowing with whom theire data willbe shared.” On the policyt front, the report find s “no one knows who is in chargr of protecting privacy” in the United States.
People can complainh to the Federal Trade Commission and other but eventhe FTC’s “principles for behavioral trackinhg make no mention of any enforcement or A low number of complaints to various agenciex means consumers don’t really know where to complain, the reporrt said. The FTC looks at online privacty more in termsof “harms” done to the report said, rather than also in termds of control over personal which is what most users care The report makes several suggestions for improvement, includinh more aggressive action by the FTC to protect online It also calls for clearefr privacy policies on web sites, written so that averagwe users can understand ’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy policy, for when analyzed for readability, was writte n at an equivalent grade level of 17.
29. The average privacty policy in the study was writtenh at a grade levelof 13.83. The full studyg can be found .