Regulators Fine Google $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube; The New York Times, September 4, 2019

Natasha Singer and Kate Conger, The New York Times;

Regulators Fine Google $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube

 

"Google on Wednesday agreed to pay a record $170 million fine and to make changes to protect children’s privacy on YouTube, as regulators said the video site had knowingly and illegally harvested personal information from youngsters and used that data to profit by targeting them with ads.

The measures were part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and New York’s attorney general. They said YouTube had violated a federal children’s privacy law known as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA."

Sweeping Away a Search History; New York Times, 4/2/14

Molly Wood, New York Times; Sweeping Away a Search History:

"YOUR search history contains some of the most personal information you will ever reveal online: your health, mental state, interests, travel locations, fears and shopping habits.

And that is information most people would want to keep private. Unfortunately, your web searches are carefully tracked and saved in databases, where the information can be used for almost anything, including highly targeted advertising and price discrimination based on your data profile.

“Nobody understands the long-term impact of this data collection,” said Casey Oppenheim, co-founder of Disconnect, a company that helps keep people anonymous online. “Imagine that someone has 40 years of your search history. There’s no telling what happens to that data.”

Fortunately, Google, Microsoft’s Bing and smaller companies provide ways to delete a search history or avoid leaving one, even if hiding from those ads can be more difficult."

Listen to Pandora, and It Listens Back; New York Times, 1/4/14

Natasha Singer, New York Times; Listen to Pandora, and It Listens Back: "People’s music, movie or book choices may reveal much more than commercial likes and dislikes. Certain product or cultural preferences can give glimpses into consumers’ political beliefs, religious faith, sexual orientation or other intimate issues. That means many organizations now are not merely collecting details about where we go and what we buy, but are also making inferences about who we are. “I would guess, looking at music choices, you could probably predict with high accuracy a person’s worldview,” says Vitaly Shmatikov, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies computer security and privacy. “You might be able to predict people’s stance on issues like gun control or the environment because there are bands and music tracks that do express strong positions.”... In its privacy policy, Pandora describes the types of information it collects about users and the purposes — music personalization and ad customization — for which the information may be employed. Although users may elect to pay $36 annually to opt out of receiving ads, advertising on the free service accounts for the bulk of Pandora’s revenue. Out of $427.1 million in revenue in the 2013 fiscal year, advertising generated $375.2 million. Pandora’s inferences about individuals become more discerning as time goes on. How we think about the ethics and accuracy of algorithms is another matter. “I’m optimistic that the benefits to society will outweigh the risks,” Professor Shmatikov says. “But our attitudes will have to evolve to understand that now everybody knows more about who we are.”"