So the FTC is on a tear. Google is officially smacked for $22.5 million for hacking though Safari’s privacy protections to sell Safari users’ information to advertisers. Then Facebook got whacked for lying about what privacy protections it was giving users. Some are saying this is bad, as it’s expanding FTC power, but this is really a bad time to make that point. Google brought this on us. I’m not up on the Facebook issue, but the Google/Safari thing was a huge breach.
Had someone gone to jail, I would not have thought it wrong. If an ordinary citizen hacked through that many users’ privacy protections, we might have, you know.
Betcha FTC won’t go after Obama for America, though.
Just another reason the Google/Safari thing was an important issue to resolve: Microsoft is pushing ahead after all with defaulting Do Not Track to On in Internet Explorer 10. That’s huge and changes the advertising game, I believe.
It’s crazy to say Google doesn’t do anything about copyright, though Google is self-interested here, to be sure. By targeting copyright infringers, Google is also improving the quality of its own search results. This is win-win.