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Journalism of Courage
Google is everywhere. Or thats the way it feels. The search engine is now also an e-mail service,navigator,browser and,increasingly,software provider. As the internet giant expands into all corners,consumers are becoming suspicious of its motives and with good reason. Google has a privacy problem,and the US Federal Trade Commission has just slapped a 22.5 million fine on it for accidentally installing tracking cookies small pieces of data that contain information about users and are stored in browsers in the Safari browser created by Apple,circumventing default privacy settings.
The fine,the largest civil penalty ever imposed by the FTC,is chump change for a company whose second-quarter revenue alone was over 12 billion. But Googles accidents relating to private consumer data are beginning to pile up. Last month,the company admitted in an e-mail to the British data protection agency that it still had data collected from unsecured wi-fi networks on its Street View mapping project data it claimed to have deleted in 2010. In April,the US Federal Communications Commission found Google to have impeded investigation of its Street View offence. These cases mark a significant violation of consumer trust.
Google is by no means the only offender when it comes to less-than-transparent practices on consumer privacy. Facebook has faced regulatory action and consistent criticism for its frequent and opaque changes to users privacy settings. Concern over how much internet companies know,and share,about peoples online and offline lives is mounting,especially as regulators seem unable to force compliance on privacy and are constantly playing catch up.
Requiring all internet services to get a clear opt-in from users on every use of their personal data might be the only way to ensure that private information remains just that: private.
