Deja News doesn_t want to be data news.
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.
The most popular articles
Software company announced new structure_ of it_s business.
more »
A number of MEPs urged Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier to come up with common rules to regulate cross border online gambling in Europe.
more »
Think before you post as once you do it is online forever. That was the message on Safer Internet Day marked on 9 February by a seminar in the European Parliament.
more »
50% of European teenagers give out personal information on the web – according to an EU study – which can remain online forever and can be seen by anybody.
more »
When did the Commission start working on social networking sites?
more »
ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business, is the first independent security-product testing and certification laboratory to earn ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation, validating the laboratory's world-class capabilities.
more »
From today, European citizens, businesses and organisations can register .eu website names using characters from all 23 official languages of the European Union.
more »
Authorities investigated 301 mobile phone services websites in follow-up to EU crackdown on misleading consumer practices.
more »
After nearly 2 years of legislative work the Telecom Package is due to be put to a final vote in Parliament on 24 November in Strasbourg.
more »
The Christian Science Monitor reports that three men have been named as being the masterminds behind the hacking of RBS WorldPay, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
more »
BAI’s Banking Strategies Insights reports that banks must get serious about improving their ATMs, especially in the area of envelope-free deposit.
more »