Month: November 2014

Google+ ‘Stories’ Automatically Curating User Photos

November 11, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment All, Privacy

Ask the Decoder: How are algorithms telling our stories for us? (Al Jazeera, 8 Oct 2014) – Jean Yang went on a big trip through Europe this summer, from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Dubrovnik, Croatia, to Oslo, Norway, and back. Like a good tourist, she took pictures on her phone, an Android, throughout her trip. When she returned home, she found a surprise package in her Google+ notifications: a neatly collated, summarized, annotated digital scrapbook titled “Trip.” Jean shared the album with me with this message: “ This is equally cool and creepy: Google made this scrapbook of my June travels based on a random selection of photos I took – and also its knowledge of where I was. It’s kind of nice to have this information organized automatically, but this is really trusting them with a lot of information. It would be funny if they took quotes from emails I sent during this time and put in quotes relevant to the places. “Oslo is so expensive! My second dinner of wonton soup cost 68 kroner.” I’m curious how they decide what to include.” When I spoke with Jean later, she was surprised in part because she didn’t know this feature existed. She was also a little taken aback by all the location information included, given that she hadn’t been using her roaming phone plan or data while abroad. So how did Google pull this together? And why did it leave Jean with mixed feelings? We looked into the program. Google introduced this scrapbooking feature in May, just before Jean’s trip. The company calls it Stories : “Your best photos are automatically chosen and arranged in a fun timeline to show the highlights of your trip or event.” There’s an example scrapbook here . * * *

Alert to Legal Privacy Implications in M&A Transactions

November 10, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Security

Privacy and data security issues in M&A transactions (Paul Hastings, 3 Oct 2014) – Because the failure of a target company to meet its privacy and data security obligations can present a significant risk to the acquiring company, compliance with applicable laws should be an important consideration in merger and acquisition transactions. A potential purchaser should seek to understand the nature of the personal information the target collects and the privacy and data security issues relevant to that business. Through due diligence, the purchaser can gain an understanding of the target’s rights and obligations regarding the personal information it has collected, retained, used and disclosed. To assist in that process, this alert provides a checklist of potential privacy and data security issues that may be triggered in mergers and acquisitions.

 

From MIRLN Founder Vince Polley: [The ABA’s Cyberspace Law Committee is undertaking a project to develop “best-practices” for security planning during M&A events.]

 

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/supakitmod

New ‘Avvo Advisor’ Provides On-Demand Legal Advice

November 7, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Legal News

New from AVVO: on-demand, fixed-fee legal advice (Robert Ambrogi, 27 Oct 2014) – Avvo, Inc. – never a company shy about pushing the envelope – has just pushed it a bit further, with the launch of Avvo Advisor , a service that provides on-demand legal advice by phone for a fixed fee of $39 for 15 minutes. The service is available to consumers online or through a free iOS app. To use the service, the consumer first enters his or her zip code and then selects the type of legal matter in which he or she needs help. The consumer is then asked to provide credit card and contact information. The service promises that the consumer will receive a call from an attorney within 15 minutes or else the consumer’s fee will be fully refunded. The service covers nine legal categories: small business, divorce, family, immigration, real estate, landlord-tenant, criminal defense, employment and bankruptcy/debt. It is so far available to consumers in 15 states, with more to be added in the coming months: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. A separate section of the site provides information for attorneys wishing to enroll in the program. All an attorney needs to participate, it says, is a bank account and a mobile phone. “You control your availability via text, whenever and wherever you want to receive Avvo Advisor sessions.” Avvo notifies the attorney via text when someone purchases a session in the attorney’s state and practice area. The attorney responds to the text to claim the session, then has 15 minutes to initiate the call. Once the call is finished, the entire fee is deposited to the attorney’s account (so there is no fee splitting).

 

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/supakitmod

Pandora Offers Artists Digital Marketing Platform

November 5, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment News

Pandora holds out olive branch of data to musicians (LA Times, 22 Oct 2014) – Pandora Media, the king of personalized online radio services, pays recording artists, songwriters, record labels and music publishers close to $300 million a year in royalties. That’s not nearly enough to satisfy the company’s critics in the music industry, who resent how little Pandora pays each time a user plays a track. On Wednesday, the company plans to start offering artists more than just royalties. It’s opening a new Artists Marketing Platform that provides detailed analytics for bands and their managers about their songs and their fans. Pandora AMP will be available free to any artist whose music is available on the service. Among other things, artists will be able to see which cities are home to the greatest clusters of their fans, the number of thumbs up (the Pandora equivalent of a Facebook “like”) each of their tracks have received from listeners, and some basic demographic information on the users who have created playlists based on their music. * * * Yet AMP has been in the works for some time. Company founder Tim Westergren, a former professional musician himself, revealed plans for the service in a January 2013 speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Westergren argued then that Pandora can offer struggling musicians a path into the middle class by making it easier for them to attract, find and connect with fans. He returned to that theme in a blog post Wednesday announcing the service.

 

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/kongsky

Verizon Tracking Cellular Web Requests

November 4, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment Privacy

Verizon Wireless injects identifiers that link its users to Web requests (ArsTechnica, 24 Oct 2014) – Cellular communications provider Verizon Wireless is adding cookie-like tokens to Web requests traveling over its network. These tokens are being used to build a detailed picture of users’ interests and to help clients tailor advertisements, according to researchers and Verizon’s own documentation. The profiling, part of Verizon’s Precision Market Insights division, kicked off more than two years ago and expanded to cover all Verizon Wireless subscribers as part of the company’s Relevant Mobile Advertising service. It appends a per-device token known as the Unique Identifier Header (UIDH) to each Web request sent through its cellular network from a particular mobile device, allowing Verizon to link a website visitor to its own internal profiles. The service aims to allow client websites to target advertising at specific segments of the consumer market. While the company started piloting the service two years ago, privacy experts only began warning of the issue this week, arguing that the service is essentially tracking users and that companies paid for a fundamental service that should not be using the data for secondary purpose. [ Polley : AT&T, also, apparently – go here to test your own carrier.]

 

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/watcharakun

First Cybersecurity Fine Imposed by FCC

November 4, 2014 Administrator Leave a comment FCC, Security

FCC imposes first cybersecurity fine (Inside Counsel, 27 Oct 2014) – Private customer information has become a business asset in the connected age, and as criminals increasingly target large corporations to extract that information, regulators are being brought to task over how to implement fines for those who leave their data vulnerable . The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has become the latest to join the ranks of regulators imposing fines for data negligence on companies, announcing on Oct 24 that it will impose its first fine related to data security on phone providers TerraCom Inc and YourTel America Inc. The FCC is asking for $10 million regarding the issue. The Commission alleges that the two companies collected personal information, including contact information and social security numbers, from customers in a manner that exposed its customer base to considerable risk of data theft. The fine was imposed based on the companies’ violation of the Communications Act of 1934.

 

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/vuono