News

"Privacy Watchdog Targets 'Web Bugs'"
E-Commerce Times (09/14/00); Saliba, Clare

A new set of regulatory guidelines from the Privacy Foundation demands
that Internet advertising companies and Web sites notify users to the
placement of Web bugs. Web bugs, or clear GIFs, are images embedded
within HTML-enhanced commercial emails or Web page software code that
help transmit data to a remote computer when the page is viewed. These
stealth tools are used to build online profiles and can also count the
number of times a specific page has been accessed. "They are designed
to monitor who is reading, yet most people have no idea they exist,"
said Stephen Keating, executive director of the Privacy
Foundation. The foundation sent its proposal to 40 corporate and
federal agencies for review on Sept. 8, and later presented it at the
Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13. Under the
guidelines, sites using Web bugs would have to employ icons to
indicate their presence, as well as icons that identify the company
that is harvesting data. Each icon would have a clickable link to a
page that explains what data is being collected, how the data is to be
used, what parties are receiving the data, and any additional
information to be combined with the data. Visitors must also be
allowed to opt out of Web bug data collection, according to the
guidelines. Furthermore, the guidelines prohibit the use of Web bugs
to gather data related to children, sex, medical issues, and financial
or employment matters. Incidents involving Web bugs have drawn
controversy and criticism in recent months. For instance, Toyrus.com
was accused of employing Web bugs to compile personal profiles of its
online shoppers for an outside marketing agency.

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/news/articles2000/000914-2.shtml
For information regarding ACM's activities on behalf of privacy matters,
visit http://www.acm.org/usacm/privacy

"Privacy Spurs Innovation"
InfoWorld (09/11/00) Vol. 22, No. 37, P. 1; Jones, Jennifer

New companies and wireless vendors are taking advantage of
controversial Internet security issues by offering users
privacy-enhancement services. On September 11, New York-based iPrivacy
will provide customers with a privacy shield for online
transactions. IPrivacy provides credit card companies and third
parties an infrastructure to protect users from disclosing personal
data and clickstream information, which is often used to build
consumer profiles. Customers would receive software from credit card
companies that allows Web access on a site server without revealing
personal data. By acting as a proxy through client-side software, the
credit card company would fill out the necessary documents for
ordering, buying, and delivering products. A company could also employ
the iPrivacy service to identify sexual harassment and other ethics
violations by using a third party such as a law firm to host the
software. IPrivacy President Ruvan Cohen does not see the service as a
solution to an online ethics problem, but rather as a big marketing
opportunity. Tacit Information Systems is offering technology that can
scan employees' outbound email to build individual personnel profiles,
but the profiles remain encrypted until the employee approves their
publication. Qode is offering users its own security measure for
online shopping: a bar-code scanner plugged into a keyboard jack that
allows customers to look for desired items on the Web. SkyGo, a
wireless marketing company, will start testing a new mobile opt-in
system in late September. The company will have strict policies
regarding the use of a customer's data in target advertising, says
SkyGo CEO Daren Tsui. Later this month Employment Law Learning
Technologies will offer online tutorials that provide corporations
with the basic principles of online privacy among other things.