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posted by Fnord666 on Friday December 30 2016, @07:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-were-just-kidding-before dept.

Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.

The complaint, by Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearing House, alleged that Google has created "super-profiles" as it can track user activity on Android mobile phones, with an 88 percent market share of smartphones worldwide. The information can also be gleaned "from any website that uses Google Analytics, hosts YouTube videos, or displays ads served by DoubleClick or AdSense," according to the complaint.

The combination of data is in contrast to Google's pledges not to combine users' personally identifiable information with DoubleClick's browsing data when acquiring the ad serving service in 2008, according to the complaint filed Thursday but made public on Monday. In October this year, ProPublica reported that Google "quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand" by its policy change in June that allowed the DoubleClick database of web browsing records to be combined with personal user data.

On June 28, Google users were informed of some new optional features introduced for their account that would give them more control over the data the company collects and how it's used, while allowing the search giant to show more relevant ads. As part of the changes, Google struck out the language in its privacy policy stating that it would "not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent," according to the complaint. Existing users were presumably given the chance to opt out, but for new users the combination of personal and browsing data was done by default, it added.

[...] Describing the June move as highly deceptive, the groups said the announcement "intentionally misled users," who had no way to figure from the wording that Google was in fact asking users for permission to link their personal information to data reflecting their behavior on as many as 80 percent of the Internet's leading websites.


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  • (Score: 1) by DmT on Friday December 30 2016, @10:45PM

    by DmT (6439) on Friday December 30 2016, @10:45PM (#447638)

    What are the best add-ons for Pale Moon? (Ghostery and Privacy Badger seem not to work anymore in the latest version, so now there is only Adblock Latitude left, but I think something else should also be added against tracking scripts ... )

  • (Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Saturday December 31 2016, @10:36PM

    by purple_cobra (1435) on Saturday December 31 2016, @10:36PM (#447959)

    uBlock Origin and uMatrix worked for me as of 27.x, but it kept losing the buttons for each on Windows; after a few attempts at diagnosing it I gave up and went back to Waterfox. Seems to work fine on Pale Moon for Linux (Manjaro, FWIW) without the button-eating behaviour so it's either peculiar to my profile or the Windows version.