Major utitility launches Microsoft home energy manager – opt-in.
“It’s interesting that customers have to opt-in to Hohm, via Microsoft’s web site, rather than being automatically enrolled. It shows that the utility is probably looking to give its customers a choice.” So says expert commentator Katie Fehrenbacher at earth2tech. We love Katie’s reporting and have learned a great deal about the grid industry from […]
Advertising Privacy
Almost every time we go online, using our computers or mobile devices, each of us produces data in some form. This data may contain only oblique information about who we are and what we are doing, but when enough of it is aggregated, facts about us which we believed were private has the potential to […]
The Unruly Advertising Ecosystem
Kudos to Harvard Asst professor Ben Edelman, for his latest expose of the underbelly of the online advertising environment. Edelman, an FPF Advisory Board member, has been a long time critic of ad networks or advertisers that don’t do enough to control where their ads are placed. At www.Benedelman.org, he has documented ads showing up […]
Future of Privacy Forum Letter to the Editor of the NYTimes: "Tracking Consumers Online: Make It Transparent"
The following piece was published on the New York Times website on October 8, 2009 Tracking Consumers Online: Make It Transparent To the Editor: Re “Tracked for Ads? Many Americans Say No Thanks” (Business Day, Sept. 30): As your article suggests, there’s little doubt that consumers will object to behavioral advertising when they feel it […]
A deeper dive into behavioral advertising in Europe
As mentioned in a previous blog post, we had the pleasure of speaking with nugg.ad CEO Stephan Noller last week. Nugg.ad is the German company that has just been awarded the EuroPrise Privacy Seal. nugg.ad’s new behavioral targeting system, Predictive Targeting Networking (PTN) 2.0, received the seal favored by many EU regulators after a vetting […]
Turow Berkeley Study: Consumers have a Bad Attitude about Behavioral Ads
Prof Turow’s study of consumer attitudes toward behavioral advertising reported in the NY Times today is a severe indictment of the current state of behavioral advertising. Consumers just do not like the feeling of being tracked. What can companies do about it? How about take Turow’s advice! Despite the significant concerns captured by the poll, […]
Kudos to Rebecca Herold on Smart Grid Work…
Rebecca Herold, the newest member of our smart grid privacy working group, was a lead drafter of the Smart Grid Privacy Impact Assessment released today by NIST. At her site, she provides some of the background to the drafting process, and includes some key material that didn’t make it in to the final document. Kudo’s […]
Privacy and the Power Grid
Grid Week 2009 comes to Washington, DC this week and this year’s gathering features some of America’s top policymakers: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Aneesh Chopra, the Obama Administration’s CTO. In the coming years, these officials and their departments will make critical decisions about the future of smart grid […]
How We’re Losing Our Privacy Online
How We’re Losing Our Privacy Online Christian Science Monitor By Gregory Lamb August 31, 2009 Gail Heyman didn’t go on Facebook often. In March Mrs. Heyman, who lives in the Atlanta area, opened an account just to keep up with a few friends. She found herself rarely checking the social-networking site, letting days or even […]
Facebook Addresses Canada's Privacy Commissioner Concerns
Several weeks ago the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, issued a comprehensive report about Facebook’s privacy policies and asked the company to address several privacy concerns they laid out or face imminent legal action. In response, Facebook announced today a series of changes that intended to address the concerns offered by the Commissioner. […]