Missing the point: it's about privacy

Posted Aug 10, 2009 19:26 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Missing the point: it's about privacy by jspaleta
Parent article: Ubuntu's multisearch surprise

Canonical selling user data as a revenue stream is unlikely to happen. UK
data protection laws are pretty strict and as of next April the
Information Commissioner will have power to levy quite substantial fines
for violation of that law. The UK *had* its privacy Chernobyl, and it
wasn't Canonical who triggered it, it was contractors working for the
taxman.

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Missing the point: it's about privacy

Posted Aug 10, 2009 19:39 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

I'll make it a point to read up on the UK privacy protection situation. But this underlines the point I'm trying to make. There's much more serious issues already associated with data privacy with existing network services activity, especially business-to-business and business-to-government services that we aren't direct participants that involves the sharing of data about us. Actively regulated consumer protection laws are probably the only serious way to balance the explosion of data sharing that is underpinning the digital services economy.

-jef

Missing the point: it's about privacy

Posted Aug 10, 2009 21:19 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Agreed: the US is appallingly bad in this situation. It's actually illegal
to transfer personal data out of the EU to an organization outside it (in
the US or elsewhere) unless that organization commits to following EU
regulations in this area: unfortunately, this is widely breached :(((

they are not selling user data

Posted Aug 10, 2009 22:27 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

they are not collecting user data on ubuntu servers and selling it.

they are selling page impressions (advertising)

yes, the act of rendering the page tells the servers that are being queried what you are looking for, and your IP address because that's the way the Internet works (it may also send a cookie if you leave them enabled, which may let them correlate your queries more precisely than they could just with the IP). it's not clear at this point that your IP address can/should be considered private information.

selling access to your eyeballs is something _very_ different from gathering your personal info and selling that.