On June 28, ProPublica published a story by Peter Maass about the Federal Trade Commission and its efforts to protect the online privacy of consumers. The headline of the story was "How a Lone Graduate Student Scooped the Government and What It Means for Your Online Privacy." The 5,500 word article opened with an explanation of how a Stanford computer science student, Jonathan Mayer, conducted research through which he discovered earlier this year that Google was circumventing the privacy settings on a large number of iPhones and placing tracking cookies on them. The story credited Mr. Mayer with figuring this out before the FTC did. The bulk of the story focused on how well or how poorly the FTC is dealing with privacy issues as the data-mining industry explodes and its own budget remains relatively flat.
Read the full story at the original publication link below.
- Date Published:07/06/2012
- Original Publication:OPB News