Many popular Facebook apps obtain sensitive information about users—and users' friends—so don't be surprised if details about your life start popping up in unexpected places.
Online tracking on 50 of the most-visited websites has risen sharply since 2010, driven in part by the rise of online-advertising auctions, according to a new study.
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After a two-year-study, the Federal Trade Commission called for Congress to pass legislation to protect privacy in the digital era and urged big data brokers to give consumers the right to see their data.
Regulators in the U.S. and EU are investigating Google for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple's Safari Web browser. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
Google and other ad companies bypassed privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser on phones and computers – tracking the online habits of people who intended for monitoring to be blocked.
The White House called for legislation to create a "privacy bill of rights" that would give people greater control over their data, likely setting off a long battle over how exactly the new policies will take shape.
A coalition of Internet companies including Google has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers—a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.
California's attorney general reached a deal with six of the largest companies in the mobile-device market over privacy policies for apps.
Three congressmen called on the FTC to investigate Google, after the Journal reported the Web giant was bypassing privacy settings.
Lawmakers and regulators are trying to do more to address consumer concerns about the difficulty of removing personal data permanently from websites that collect it and make it available for background checks and other uses.
The Supreme Court ruled police must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to a suspect's vehicle, in one of the first major cases to test constitutional privacy rights in the digital age.
The Wall Street Journal analyzed 100 of the most used applications that connect to Facebook's social-networking platform to see what data they sought from people. See what permissions they ask users to grant them.
Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed by the 50 most popular websites and built an index of visitors' exposure to monitoring. See the results.
It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for products that match your interests. The Journal explains "behavioral targeting," and how advertisers use cookies to track your online habits from site to site.
The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed by the 50 of the most popular U.S. websites for children and teenagers and built an "exposure index." See the findings.
The Journal analyzed the data collected and shared by 101 popular apps on iPhone and Android phones, including the Journal's own app. See the results.
New York ad company [x+1] made predictions about users based on just one click on a website. Read more about the users and the companies' assumptions.
RapLeaf ties people's email addresses to a profile about them and uses that profile to target ads. See data RapLeaf had on one user and how its system works.
Just what kind of information can the government get with a “national security letter” - the tool that allows investigators to seek financial, phone and Internet data without a judge's approval? It's a secret.
It isn't “reasonably possible” to say how many Americans have had their emails and phone calls reviewed as part of a four-year-old counter-terrorism law, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
New Jersey's attorney general sued an iPhone app maker Wednesday, alleging that the company's educational games collected personal information from children and then sent it to a data analytics company.
Twitter said Thursday it would stop collecting information on Web surfers who indicate they don't want to be tracked online - a victory for privacy proponents and supporters of “Do Not Track” policies.
A Wall Street Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on American consumers. First in a series.
The largest U.S. websites are installing new and intrusive consumer-tracking technologies on the computers of people visiting their sites—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time—a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
After sharp internal debate, Microsoft designed Internet Explorer so that users must turn on privacy settings every time IE starts. Second in a series.
Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself. Third in a series.
GPS tracking technology used by many phone companies has unexpectedly made it easier for spousal abusers to track their victims. Fourth in a series.
A confidential, Google "vision statement" shows the company in a deep round of soul-searching: How far should it go in profiting from the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities? Fifth in a series.
A WSJ investigation into online privacy found that popular children's websites install more tracking technologies on computers than top sites aimed at adults. Sixth in a series.
The market for personal data about Internet users is hot—and in the vanguard is "scraping," the practice of harvesting and selling online conversations. In May, Nielsen Co. scraped private forums where patients discuss illnesses. Seventh in a series.
Many of the top applications on Facebook have been transmitting identifying information to Internet tracking and ad companies. Eighth in a series.
RapLeaf—which compiles real names and email addresses of Internet users—ranks among the most sophisticated players in the fast-growing business of profiling people online and trading in personal details of their lives. Ninth in a series.
Life insurers are testing a new use for data about Americans: predicting longevity. A Deloitte test evaluated applicants based on data about things like online shopping and magazine subscriptions. 10th in a series.
One of the most potentially intrusive technologies for profiling and targeting Internet users with ads, "deep packet inspection," is on the verge of a comeback. 11th in a series.
Device fingerprinting, or collecting digital identifiers from computers, cellphones and other devices, is emerging as the latest tool for companies who sell the information to advertisers. 12th in a series.
IPhone and Android apps are breaching the privacy of smartphone users, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. 13th in a series.
As the surreptitious tracking of Internet users becomes more aggressive and widespread, start-ups and tech giants alike are pushing a new product: privacy. 14th in a series.
Data-gathering firms and technology companies are aggressively matching people's TV-viewing behavior with other personal data and using it to help advertisers buy ads targeted to shows watched by certain kinds of people. 15th in a series.
To determine the prevalence of Internet tracking technologies, The Wall Street Journal analyzed the 50 most visited U.S. websites. Here's how we did the study.
To determine the prevalence of Internet tracking technologies on kids' websites, The Wall Street Journal analyzed 50 of the most-visited U.S. sites for children and teens.
The Wall Street Journal analyzed 50 popular applications, or "apps," on each of the iPhone and Android operating systems to see what information about the phones, their users and their locations the apps send to themselves and to outsiders.
Surfing the Web kickstarts a process that passes information about you and your interests to tracking companies and advertisers. See how it works.
Key tracking terminology
The Internet is rife with surveillance technology, but you can protect your privacy by following these steps.
The Internet has given rise to a dizzying array of sites that compile public information and profiles. A guide to getting out of the largest ones.
Parents can take steps to limit their children's exposure to online tracking. The most important step is talking to them, experts say.
It's very difficult to avoid being tracked by device-fingerprinting technology. But those who would like to try have two different, admittedly extreme, techniques.
There isn't much users can do to stop mobile apps from passing data, but paying attention to information requests can help.
These online marketers will show you what they know about you, or think they know.
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WhatTheyKnow: How Mitt Romney Followed Me Around the Internet: http://t.co/yWsFgE0v from @propublica
WhatTheyKnow: RT @inafried: Google talking "Google now" - service that serves info based on your location, calendar, search history http://t.co/ARkhV02P
WhatTheyKnow: RT @jenvalentino: Just what kind of information can the government get with a "national security letter"? That's redacted. http://t.co/Q8F0mdWV
WhatTheyKnow: Mac users shown pricier hotels on Orbitz: http://t.co/3ouf7pjc
WhatTheyKnow: RT @geoffreyfowler: Are you ready for a Facebook ad network? @shayndi reports Facebook is now placing ads on Zynga http://t.co/hGBk8i53
It's modern commerce: Web users get back as much as they give, says Jim Harper.
As companies strive to personalize services, the surreptitious collection of personal information is rampant. The very idea of privacy is under threat, says Nicholas Carr.
Facebook is close to a settlement with the U.S. government over charges that it misled users about its use of their personal information.
State and federal authorities follow the movements of thousands of Americans each year by secretly monitoring the location of their cellphones, often with little judicial oversight, in a practice facing legal challenges.
Blue Coat, a U.S. company, acknowledged Syria has been using its devices to censor web activity.
MasterCard and Visa are pushing into a new business: using what they know about people's credit-card purchases at brick-and-mortar stores for targeting them with ads online.
The U.S. government obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force Google and a small Internet provider to turn over data from the email of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum.
Technologies used by law enforcement to track people's locations, often without a search warrant, are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment is keeping with the times.
Major websites such as MSN.com and Hulu.com have been tracking people's online activities using powerful new methods that are almost impossible for computer users to detect, new research shows.
As Internet giants Facebook and Google race to expand their facial-recognition abilities, new research shows how powerful, and potentially intrusive, these tools have already become.
Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. are about to adopt controversial hand-held facial-recognition devices—raising fundamental questions about privacy and civil liberties.
Facebook's "Like" and Twitter's "Tweet" buttons allow Internet users to share content. But they also let their makers collect data about websites people visit.
Cellphones that collect people's locations are only the tip of the iceberg: Auto makers, insurance companies and even shopping malls are experimenting with new ways to use this kind of data.
Apple is scaling back how much information its iPhones store about where they have been and said it will stop collecting such data when consumers request it.
Apple's iPhone is collecting and storing location data even when location services are turned off, according to a Journal test.
Researchers are harvesting a wealth of intimate detail from our cellphone data, uncovering the hidden patterns of our social lives, travels, risk of disease—even our political views.
Apple's iPhones and Google's Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.
The Obama administration plans to ask Congress Wednesday to pass a "privacy bill of rights" to protect Americans from intrusive data gathering, amid growing concern about the tracking and targeting of Internet users.
An FTC report calls for development of a system that would enable people to avoid having their actions monitored online, a move Internet-ad firms oppose.