Facebook ordered to tighten privacy by regulators

Facebook has agreed to tighten its privacy practices and delete unneeded data sooner following an investigation by Irish regulators.

Facebook agreed to a series of privacy changes

 

The social network, which has more than 800 million users, houses user data and all operations outside the United States and Canada in Ireland.

Following a full audit of Facebook’s systems, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes, said the firm had agreed to more than a dozen privacy improvements, to be completed within six months.

The investigation was launched in October after a series of controversies the way Facebook treats personal data, including claims that Facebook was creating “shadow profiles” of people who are not members.

Irish regulators however found that while it does collect data about non-users for security purposes, Facebook does not otherwise use it and does not create shadow profiles.

“While certain data which could be used to build what we have seen termed as a ‘shadow profile’ of a non-user was received by Facebook, no actual use of this nature was made of such data,” their report said.
Lord Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of public policy in Europe, welcomed the finding.
“They’ve found that the way we’re using data is consistent with how we say we’ll use data… the issues raised were not based on substance," he said.
The data collected from non-Facebook users when they visit websites that have social elements such as the "Like" button is used to prevent fraudulent logins, the investigation found.
“For people who are not users of Facebook or who are not currently logged in the browser cookie we collect, which is an important security cookie, will be deleted after 10 days," Lord Allan said.
Regulators also investigated Facebook’s use of facial recognition technology, which encourages users to identify, or "tag", friends in photographs. They found fault in theway it was introduced but said it did not breach data protection law. The feature was switched on without notice in June, prompting criticism from privacy advocates.
"[Facebook] should have handled the implementation of this feature in a more appropriate manner and we recommended that it take additional steps from a best practice perspective to ensure the consent collected from users for this feature can be relied upon,” the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s report said.
Facebook agreed to provide users with more notifications about facial recognition to give them the opportunity to opt out, as part of changes that will mean more privacy alerts across the website.

It will also make it easier for users to find out what data Facebook holds about them, introduce clearer terms and conditions and a better mechanism for users to give consent for their personal data to be used by third-party apps, and give users more control over whether they are added to groups by friends.
“It will be an intense period in the next six months for us to get over some of the areas they’ve suggested for improvement,” said Lord Allan.
Last month Facebook was forced apologise and to agree to audits of its systems by American regulators, who said its privacy claims had been "unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law".

Apple iPhone 'outselling rivals as Christmas approaches'

Apple's iPhone 4S was Britain's biggest selling mobile phone in the month before December 9, according to analysts.

The iPhone 4S outsold rivals in November and December, according to analysts.

 

The iPhone 4S, which was released in October, made up a quarter of all handset sales in the four weeks before December 9, according to market research firm GfK.

Samsung's Galaxy SII was the second-best selling phone in the week up to December 9, the Financial Times reported.

However, Nokia's new Lumia handset was off to an underwhelming start, failing to make the top 10 handsets in the four weeks of the survey period. The Lumia, which runs Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system, was released in Britain on November 16.

GfK, which monitors sales through mobile network operators, said that Apple iPhone models made up five of the top 15 handsets sold in the first week of December.

The iPhone 4S is a more powerful version of its predecessor, with an improved camera and a new voice control system called Siri. Last week, there was speculation that Google was working on its own voice control software to be released as part of its Android mobile operating system.
RIM, the Canadian company that makes BlackBerry handsets, has had a bad year but there was at least some comfort in the GfK data. Sales of BlackBerry handsets increased during the period of the survey, with three variants of the BlackBerry Curve in the top 10. 

Will BlackBerry survive 2012?

Troubled BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has announced further delays to its new phones - now analysts and commentators are making their complaints ever more loudly 

BLackBerry's new generation of mobiles will not appear until late 2012

 

It seems that every month BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion has more bad news to announce. In November it paid a $365million charge for unsold PlayBook tablets; yesterday it announced that crucial new phones would now be delayed to the latter half of 2012, rather than being out by March.

Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis charitably cut their pay to just a $1 each, but analysts and critics argued they’re still overpaid. One writer on the respected blog PaidContent blog said the pair should have been “fired months, if not years ago”.

At the heart of BlackBerry’s problems lie its troubled transition to a new operating system: in order to compete with the iPhone and with Google’s Android phones, the Canadian company has had to rebuild its software from the ground up. So far, the only product using a new version is the underwhelming PlayBook.

Yesterday, announcing RIM’s results, Lazridis delivered the bad news almost casually. The new OS will power a new generation of phone, but in order to compete RIM had earlier changed its mind on which chips to use. Now he said RIM could not get enough of them and that delays were unavoidable.

Lazaridis compounded the disappointment for investors by cutting the firm’s prediction of sales to between 11 and 12 million smartphones in the current Christmas quarter, down from 14.8 million over the same time last year. Others companies’ sales are rising at his expense.

Last month, analyst Ian Fogg said that “if you look at RIM’s track record they have a history of missing launch dates; that doesn’t bode well.” He warned ominously that “If they fail to ship quality products we’ll see a slow decline,” and it would appear that Fogg’s predictions are already coming true.
With rather dry understatement, however, Lazaridis said in a statement that "It may take some time to realise the benefits of the platform transition that we are undertaking, but we continue to believe that RIM has the right set of strengths and capabilities to maintain a leading role in the mobile communications industry”. When he claimed that people tell him “every day” that BlackBerry is the best communications device around, commentators immediately said he was listening to the wrong people.
RIM's share of the smartphone market in the US fell to 9.2 per cent in the third quarter from 24 per cent in the same period last year, according to research group Canalys. Increasing numbers of analysts across the board now find one conclusion inescapable: RIM doesn’t just need customers – it needs a buyer.

Google teams up with Science Museum for new exhibitions

Google is supporting two exhibitions exploring the history of computing at the Science Museum in London. 

Google has put $12m into its international museum project, which it hopes will galvanise interest in computing

 

The exhibitions, funded by Google, will open to the public over the next three years with a view to stimulating interest in computer technologies among youngsters.

The partnership, which is part of Google’s multi-million dollar initiative announced in April this year, hopes to inspire the next generation of scientists. So far Google has put forward $12 million into seven museums, six in the US and one in the UK.

However Michael Jones, Google Earth’s chief technology advocate, said the international initiative “won’t end by signing a cheque,” and the company aims to work closely with museums to educate children and adults alike. "Besides, how else can we all touch the moon?" he said.

The first exhibition, opening in June next year, will celebrate the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the well-respected English mathematician who is largely considered the “father” of computer science. His most famous creation, the Turing machine, formed the first basic model of the modern computer.

Peter Barron, director of external relations at Google, said he hopes the exhibitions will be “inspiring” for young visitors. “We are delighted to be able to support these new exhibitions which will help explain both the birth of modern computing and how that revolution touches our lives today.”

The second exhibition, named Making Modern Communications, will not open until Summer 2014 but will remain thereafter at as a permanent addition to the museum. The show will give visitors an in-depth look at the last 200 years of information and communications technology, showcasing “never seen before objects,” according to Google.
Earlier this week Google donated £550,000 to the Bletchley Park Trust, where Alan Turing famously shortened the Second World War through his code-breaking expertise, in a bid to transform the site into a national heritage.

2011: the year of Google Android

More than 10bn apps have now been downloaded by Google’s smartphone users, writes Matt Warman , but Android is set to get even bigger 

ANDROID

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998, the pair were already plotting big things: not for nothing was the logo designed with the help of a professor of design at Stanford.

Even Brin and Page, however, would probably not have bet that in 2011 nearly 8bn mobile apps would be downloaded for a mobile phone the like of which hadn’t even been thought of.

But 2011 has indeed been the year of the Android. Google’s free, open-source operating system has been so widely adopted by manufacturers the world over that it now accounts for the majority of smartphones sold and has been used for applications in appliances from fridges to televisions.

Top London tailor Spencer Hart is even using an Android-based “notebook”, the Samsung Galaxy Note, to annotate drawings for bespoke suits. Its uses are apparently endless.

The total number of applications downloaded now stands at slightly over 10bn. At an equivalent stage in its development cycle, Apple’s App Store was at just half that. As it’s compatible purely with Apple products, it could be argued that in fact the original App Store was more eagerly adopted, but the sheer volume of Android apps downloaded is a force to be reckoned with.

All the same, with 190 countries downloading apps – led by the South Koreans, Hong Kong and Taiwan and closely followed by America, Singapore, Northern Europe and Israel – sceptics would be right to ask why Apple’s remains the more profitable platform.
A quarter of all Android downloads are casual games, which are typically low-margin for software developers. Analysts believe Apple users download twice as many apps per device and that Apple has, thanks to the iTunes store, the payment details of 200m people. With the two app stores now growing at the same rate, those are the figures Google really needs to match.
Still, Google claims that while the first 1bn app installs from Android Market took nearly 20 months and the second billion took five months, the third billion took only two months. More than half a million new Android phones are now activated globally every day and the growth is continuing to accelerate.
The company has placed increasing emphasis on app sales and downloads, launching movie rentals and redesigning the Android Market to better rival Apple’s App Store. In due course,
it is very likely to start to offer the kind of performance that in particular makes the best iOS games so much better: that will be down to the puff of a vast customer base and better hardware.
To mark the 10bn downloads landmark, Google is also making a number of apps available for 10p for 10 days. Titles such as driving games Asphalt 6 HD, Sketchbook Mobile and keyboard improver Swiftkey X are intended as much to encourage users to download even more software and to show them what the platform is capable of as they are to mark the occasion.
It’s a peculiar situation, but in some ways Google’s marking this massive number not because it’s significant in itself – the real story, in fact, is how much bigger this Android is likely to get.