4 ms·

I'm curious if data privacy & protection will ever emerge from its little corner where a few passionate folks worry about it while the masses blithely ignore ho

by mgreg 12y ago

I'm curious if data privacy & protection will ever emerge from its little corner where a few passionate folks worry about it while the masses blithely ignore how their personal data is used and abused. Couple of other related items just from today indicate this _may_ be taking on steam but we've seen this kind of blip before just to see it fade. 1. Helping Prove Mr. Weinberg's going (CEO of DuckDuckGo) is an article on how heath web sites share your search queries with 3rd parties found at http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-these-companies-are-collecting-your-data http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-... Nice to know that WebMD et al are sharing your _assumed_ private searched for whatever itch you might have with others. 2. Symantec published results of their European survey on the topic of Data Privacy found at http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/presskits/b-state-of-privacy-report-2015.pdf http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/presskits/b-stat... Not sure I believe a survey where the respondents claim to read the terms of service 25% of the time.... My guess would have been .25% of the time.

chestnut-tree 12y ago
"...health web sites share your search queries with 3rd parties..." For anyone looking for health information (in English), I recommend the NHS website. (Start your search from there rather than Google if you're worried about being tracked). It may not be the best-looking website, but the info is written by medical professionals and there are no commercial interests since the NHS is funded by the UK taxpayer. They have an A-Z of conditions, a symptom checker, videos and much more. (I presume this is all available to anyone outside the UK) http://www.nhs.uk http://www.nhs.uk
- unprepare 12y ago
  Unfortunately This falls into the same trap as the US CDC site in the parents linked article. The NHS site you linked makes requests to google analytics, webtrends and cloudfront. The point in the parents article applies here equally, since what i'm searching will still be analyzed by Google at the very least. I'm not sure how identifiable this information is though, but definitely important to be aware of

by mgreg 12y ago

chestnut-tree 12y ago

"...health web sites share your search queries with 3rd parties..." For anyone looking for health information (in English), I recommend the NHS website. (Start your search from there rather than Google if you're worried about being tracked). It may not be the best-looking website, but the info is written by medical professionals and there are no commercial interests since the NHS is funded by the UK taxpayer. They have an A-Z of conditions, a symptom checker, videos and much more. (I presume this is all available to anyone outside the UK) http://www.nhs.uk http://www.nhs.uk

unprepare 12y ago
Unfortunately This falls into the same trap as the US CDC site in the parents linked article. The NHS site you linked makes requests to google analytics, webtrends and cloudfront. The point in the parents article applies here equally, since what i'm searching will still be analyzed by Google at the very least. I'm not sure how identifiable this information is though, but definitely important to be aware of