Privacy study shows Google

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Using trackers called “web bugs,” third parties collect user data from many populafrweb sites, and sites oftenh allow this, even thougu their privacy policies say they don’t share user data with others. “Wegb bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were foundd on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 perceny of theapproximately 400,000 unique domaines examined in the study,” the authors found. Site with the most web bugs were forblogginvg — blogspot and typepad were No. 1 and No. 2 on the list in and blogger was No. 4. Googler itself was No. 3.
Ashkan Soltani, Travis Pinnick and Joshua Gomeaz ofthe university’s information school wrots the study, published Monday. They analyzed privacu policies posted on web sites and foun loopholes used by many site operators to allow thired parties to still collect data on whoviews pages. They also for example, that although web sitesz may reassure visitorsthat “we don’y share data with third parties,” thos third parties don’t include a company’s affiliateds — Google (NASDAQ: for example, has 137 subsidiary businesses.
“The law on affiliatwe sharing generally ismore permissive” than that on sharinbg user data with third party companies, the reporr said. Companies controlling the top 50 busiesft web sites had an average of 297affiliatex each, meaning they could share user data with a lot of othee companies. Popular site , for example, is owned by New York’s NWS), which has more than 1,500 subsidiaries. BAC) in Charlotte has more than 2,300o subsidiaries. “Users do not know and cannotg learn the full range of affiliateds with which websites may share thereport said.
Thougg many Internet users are familiar with used to study theirsurfing habits, they are less familiat with so-called “web bugs,” which can’t be cleared out of a web browser, sincre they are part of a web site’sz HTML code. Since the web bugs are created directly bythird parties, theire use doesn’t strictly count as “sharing” of data by the web site’xs owner, though users concerned about privacy may be unimpresserd by this technicality.
“We believ e that this practicecontravenea users’ expectations; it makes little sense to disclaimn formal information sharing, but allow functionally equivalent trackint with third parties,” the report said. Who'sx in charge of privacy? Although surveys of Internetf users show peopleare “very concerned abou t privacy and do not want websiteas to collect and share their personal information without sifting through privacy policies is not It would take 200 hours a year for a typicaol person to read the privacy policies of all the web site they visit, for example.
Thus “users have no practicao way of knowing with whom their data will be On thepolicy front, the report findsw “no one knows who is in charge of protectint privacy” in the United States. Peoplde can complain to the Federal Trade Commission andothed agencies, but even the FTC’s “principles for behaviora tracking make no mention of any enforcemengt or accountability.” A low number of complaintzs to various agencies means consumers don’t reallh know where to complain, the report said.
The FTC lookxs at online privacy more in termsof “harms” done to consumers, the reporrt said, rather than also in terms of contro l over personal information, whicn is what most usersz care about. The report makes several suggestionwsfor improvement, including more aggressive action by the FTC to protectf online privacy. It also calls for clearerf privacy policies on web written so that average userss canunderstand them. ’ s (NASDAQ: ADBE) privacy policy, for example, when analyzede for readability, was written at an equivalentr grade levelof 17.29. The average privacy policgy in the study was writte at a grade levelof 13.83. The full studyu can be found .