Bits Blog: The Rise and Fall of Windows Mobile, Under Ballmer

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Under Code, Apps Would Disclose Collection of Data

A variety of groups, including app developers and consumer advocates, have agreed to test a voluntary code of conduct that would require participating app developers to offer short-form notices about whether their apps collect certain personal details from users — including health and social networking data — or share user-specific data with entities like advertising networks or consumer data resellers.

The idea is to allow people to compare the data collection practices of, say, flashlight apps and choose one that does not ingest unrelated material like their photos or contact lists. The determination that the notices are ready for testing is the outcome of yearlong negotiations — convened by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the United States Commerce Department — to increase mobile app transparency for consumers. Participants included app developers, digital marketing, civil liberties, consumer and privacy groups.

On Thursday, many participants in the process voted to support a version of the code drafted by a diverse coalition including the Application Developers Alliance, an industry association, and advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the World Privacy Forum.

Although major mobile app developers like Apple and Google, which develops mobile apps for its Android platform, have not indicated whether they intend to sign on to the code of conduct, groups involved in drafting it say it is a significant advance in mobile privacy for consumers — and an unusual agreement among industry and consumer advocates.

“It’s a victory for common sense,” said Tim Sparapani, vice president for law, policy and government relations at the Application Developers Alliance, a group representing more than 100 companies and 20,000 individual developers.

But other participants in the negotiations said the notices would do little to give individual consumers more insight into or control over the vast piles of information about them that online entities collect and analyze. The notices would display only a limited list of data collection categories, they say, and would not allow consumers to opt out of data-mining or even see the records companies had amassed about them.

“A very modest slice of privacy was put forward,” for the groups to tackle, said Susan Grant, the director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, a research and advocacy organization representing about 300 consumer groups. “As time went on, that slice became more and more narrowed.”

She abstained from the vote Thursday on whether to support the code.

In the past, the app industry has been heavily criticized by some federal regulators and consumer advocates for collecting personal details from users without their knowledge or consent. A review last year by the Federal Trade Commission of 400 popular children’s apps available on Google and Apple platforms concluded that only 20 percent disclosed their data collection practices.

The code of conduct would require participating mobile app developers to show notices indicating whether their apps collected user-specific details in any of eight categories: biometrics, including fingerprints or facial recognition data; Web browsing history; logs of phone calls or texts made or received; contact list details like e-mail addresses or social network connections; financial information, like credit or banking data; health or medical data; precise location data; and stored text, video or photo files.

Signatories to the code would also have to list any of eight categories of entities with which their apps shared information; these include ad networks; mobile carriers; consumer data resellers; data analytics companies; government entities; operating systems; social networks; or other apps.

Companies that violated a promise to adhere to the code would be subject to enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission. The code is the first step in a larger plan by the Obama administration to institute a wide-ranging consumer privacy bill of rights that would give consumers some rights to access, control and correct the personal details companies collected about them.

Last year, the White House issued a report proposing that Congress enact such a consumer privacy bill. The report said the bill would rely on codes of conduct, worked out in industry-advocacy group negotiations, to specify how different industries would adhere to those principles. The administration has yet to make public the proposed text for the legislation.

But some participants who helped develop the mobile app transparency notices said the modest gains that resulted for consumers indicated a need for stronger privacy legislation and regulation.

“If we want to move expeditiously through bigger issues, we are going to need some legislative action,” said Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy issues at the Washington office of the A.C.L.U.

Bits Blog: Health Sites Under Scrutiny Over Mining of Data

Millions of people rely on Web sites like WebMD and Health.com for information about depression, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer and other sensitive personal health issues. But it can be difficult for consumers to understand how health sites may capture, analyze and share information about user searches and other activities — even the small minority of people who manage to slog all the way through the privacy policies.

Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois.

In an effort to increase industry transparency, Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, has opened an inquiry into the data-mining practices of some popular health sites.

On Tuesday, she sent letters to officials at eight sites asking for detailed information about their companies’ data collection, data storage and data sharing practices. The sites included: about.com; drugs.com; health.com; mayoclinic.com; menshealth.com; mercola.com; WebMd.com; and weightwatchers.com.

In the letters to the sites’ executives, Ms. Madigan said she was concerned about the potential dissemination of information related to people’s private health concerns.

“Health-related information, which would be protected from disclosure when said in a doctor’s office, can be captured, shared, and sold when entered into a Web site,” she wrote. “These concerns are likely overlooked by consumers, as the disclosures about capturing and sharing their information are often buried in privacy policies not found on websites’ main pages.”

WebMD’s privacy policy, for example, says that the site does not make a user’s personal information – like a name or address — available to third parties for marketing purposes.

But third parties, the privacy policy says, may use non-personal data to target WebMD users with ads related to their interests. The policy added that WebMD may combine personal and nonpersonal information about users on the site, or may collate that data with information gathered from external sources.

Risa Fisher, a spokeswoman for WebMD, said that the company had just received Ms. Madigan’s letter of inquiry and planned to provide the information she requested about its user data practices.

“Privacy is very important to WebMD and our policies are designed to fully protect the personal health information of our users,” Ms. Fisher said.

The Illinois inquiry comes after the publication a few days ago of a research letter in a medical journal reporting that some popular health portals leaked information about users’ health searches to third parties, like social networks or ad networks, operating on their Web sites.

For his research, Marco D. Huesch, a health care policy researcher at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at University of Southern California searched for content related to depression, herpes and cancer on 20 popular health-related Web sites.

In the letter about his study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, he said that 13 of those sites used third-party tracking elements like cookies or social media plug-ins. Seven of the sites, he wrote, leaked his health searches to third-party trackers.

Although Mr. Huesch wrote that he could not determine whether the third parties misused the information, he found the leakage of the health searches worrisome in itself.

“The ramifications could span embarrassment, discrimination in the labor market,” Mr. Huesch wrote, “or the deliberate decision by marketers not to offer or advertise particular goods and services to an individual, based solely on the companies’ privately gathered knowledge.”

The online advertising industry is keenly aware of such concerns.

This year, the Network Advertising Initiative, an industry self-regulatory association for third-party digital ad companies, revised its code of conduct to require that its members obtain user permission before collecting information about certain specific health conditions.

The conditions that would require user permission include “all types of cancer, mental health related conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases,” the revised code said, but not acne, high blood pressure, heartburn, cold and flu, or cholesterol management.

The self-regulatory group has nearly 100 members, according to its site. The updated version of code of conduct is scheduled to take effect next year.

IPhone Contracts With Carriers Under Scrutiny in Europe

Although they have not filed formal complaints, a group of European wireless carriers recently submitted information about their contracts with Apple to the European Commission, according to a person briefed on the communications with the carriers who asked not to be identified.

This person said the accusations focused on Apple’s contracts with French carriers, though other countries may also be involved.

In a statement, the European Commission, the union’s administrative arm, which oversees antitrust enforcement in the 27-nation bloc, confirmed that it was examining Apple’s carrier deals. But it said it had not begun a formal antitrust investigation. The commission is not obligated to act until it receives a formal complaint of anticompetitive behavior. That it is already examining the contracts suggests that it is taking the carriers’ concerns seriously.

“We have been contacted by industry participants and we are monitoring the situation, but no antitrust case has been opened,” said Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for Joaquín Almunia, competition commissioner of the European Union.

Elaborating at news conference in Brussels on Friday, Mr. Colombani reiterated that no formal complaints had been brought against Apple, and suggested that regulators would need to judge the relevance of any allegations in such a dynamic sector before taking any steps that could lead to a formal antitrust case.

An Apple spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris, said, “Our contracts fully comply with local laws wherever we do business, including the E.U.”

It was unclear how many carriers were in discussions with the European Union. Based on several interviews with people briefed on iPhone contracts, it appears that Apple’s contracts with some smaller European carriers were stricter than those with larger companies.

People briefed on the carriers’ relationships with Apple, who declined to be named because Apple does not permit them to speak publicly about the contracts, said the terms that some European carriers must accept to sell iPhones are unusually strict, making it difficult for other handset makers to compete.

The issues do not appear to apply to carriers in the United States; an executive at an American carrier said the terms of its contract with Apple were aggressive but not unreasonable. Apple is well known for tightly controlling the design of its products, down to the smallest of details, and closely controlling its manufacturing. Its relationship with carriers, long cloaked by strict nondisclosure agreements, offers a window into the similar levels of control Apple exerts on business partners who want to sell the iPhone.

While European carriers quietly grumble about Apple’s muscle in the marketplace, Apple does not force any of them to sell the iPhone — it does not need to. Carriers are petrified at the thought of not having the smartphone because it remains a huge hit with the public, driving waves of customers to their stores, especially in the months after the latest models are introduced and heavily advertised.

Apple’s contract differs with every carrier that sells the iPhone. Such sales accounted for 56 percent of Apple’s $55 billion in revenue last quarter. In most cases, Apple sets a quota for how many iPhones the carrier needs to sell over a set period of time, usually three years. If it does not agree to the quotas, it does not receive the iPhone.

If quotas are not met, the carrier is obligated to pay Apple for unsold devices, according to one person who negotiated with Apple while at a European carrier.

That remains a largely theoretical risk at this point, however, because demand for the iPhone still exceeds supplies almost everywhere it is sold. Apple’s iPhone 5 was the best-selling smartphone in the world during the fourth quarter of 2012, outselling competing models from Samsung, the biggest maker of mobile devices in the world, according to Strategy Analytics.

Charles Duhigg contributed reporting.

Bits Blog: Google Puts Android and Chrome Under One Boss

Stephen Lam/Reuters Sundar Pichai’s appointment could have broad implications for the mobile business.

3:30 p.m. | Updated Added comments from Andy Rubin in letter to Android developers.

Google announced on Wednesday a change in its executive ranks that could have broad implications for the mobile business.

Andy Rubin, who had been senior vice president in charge of Android, Google’s mobile operating system, has been replaced by Sundar Pichai. Mr. Pichai is the senior vice president of Chrome, and will now oversee Android as well.

Google has been in a confusing position because it has two unrelated operating systems: Chrome and Android.

At first, Google said they were separate: Chrome was for computers and the Web, and Android was for touch-screen mobile devices and apps.

But the lines among devices have blurred. Now, some computers (like the Chromebook Pixel that Google introduced last month) have touch screens, and people use mobile devices the way they used to use computers.

The personnel change is a sign that Google now sees the need to somehow coordinate or merge the two operating systems.

Though Android has been wildly successful, with 750 million devices activated worldwide, computers running Chrome’s operating system have not.

At a press event to introduce the new Chromebook, Mr. Pichai drew less of a distinction between the two operating systems than Google executives had in the past.

“So far, we have been in a world which has been pretty straightforward: Android phones and tablets and Chrome laptops,” Mr. Pichai said. “But lines do blur.”

“The way we think about it internally,” he said, “is as a user, you sign in to both these devices, you use search, Maps, Gmail” and other Google products. “All your Google services work seamlessly across devices.”

The company did not provide any details about how Chrome or Android might change under the new leadership.

“Today we’re living in a new computing environment,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, wrote in a company blog post announcing the change. “People are really excited about technology and spending a lot of money on devices.”

Mr. Pichai has had a fast rise at Google and has experience developing hardware, a new area of focus for the company. In addition to Chrome and Android, he also oversees Google Apps, like Gmail and Drive, for consumers and businesses.

Mr. Rubin is a big name in the mobile world. He is a co-founder of Android, which Google bought in 2005 and turned into Apple’s biggest mobile competitor and the most-used mobile operating system.

Google did not say why Mr. Rubin was replaced. Despite Android’s success, it is at a crossroads as device-making partners like Samsung and Amazon increasingly become competitors.

Mr. Page praised Mr. Rubin and said he would stay at the company in a new position, though he did not say what it would be. But there were hints that Mr. Rubin could join Google X, the company’s lab for creating new technologies like driverless cars, Google glasses and other wearable technologies. The glasses run Android.

Mr. Page wrote, “Andy, more moonshots please!” Google refers to Google X as a lab for “moonshots,” or world-changing ideas.

Motorola, the Android cellphone maker that Google spent $12.5 billion to buy, could also benefit from Mr. Rubin’s perspective as it tries to make phones that compete with those from Apple and Samsung. While Mr. Rubin was overseeing Android, Google tried to keep a strict wall between the two companies to appease Motorola’s competitors.

In a letter to Android developers on Wednesday, Mr. Rubin praised the Android team and wrote, “Today, the success of Android combined with the strength of our management team, gives me the confidence to step away from Android and hand over the reins.”

“As for me, I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google,” he said in the letter, which was first published by The Wall Street Journal.

Hip-Hop Beef: Gucci Mane Throws Nicki Minaj AND French Montana Under The Bus, “They Know They Ain’t Keep It Real” [Video]

Looks like Gucci Mane hasn’t had enough of opening his mouth sideways about any rappers that he’s salty with. At this point he’s dissed Nas, Yung Joc, Block, Young Jeezy, AND Keyshia Cole.

Go ahead and add Nicki Minaj and French Montana to the list…SMH

Image via YouTube

TMZ Live: Lil Wayne — Hysterical … Under Oath

TMZ Live
Lil Wayne  Hysterical ... Under Oath

Rapper Lil Wayne provided the most hilarious deposition we've ever seen -- ripping one-liners, busting on attorneys -- but it could ultimately bite him in the ass. Especially the part where it sounds like he's threatening a lawyer.

Also, Chris Brown fails a drug test -- but the judge doesn't violate his probation ... even though he's not supposed to break ANY laws. We'll tell you what saved his hide.

Plus, the NFL "tragedy" everyone's talking about! Just how badly did the Green Bay Packers get screwed? Legendary GB running back Ahmad Green and the Mayor of Green Bay call in to sound off!

(0:00) L'il Wayne gives the greatest depositions ever -- forgetting most of his life, challenging "stupid ass" questions, and possible threatening an attorney. You have to see this.
(8:10) Lindsay Lohan claims her latest arrest was so stressful that it made her lung infection worse. Right, and smoking pack after pack of cigarettes had nothing to do with it.
(10:00) It's quite possibly the worst call in NFL history -- when refs awarded the Seahawks a touchdown when the Packers clearly intercepted it. Legendary GB running back Ahman Green and the Mayor of Green Bay both call in.
(17:00) Chris Brown failed a drug test -- but the judge overlooking his probation didn't violate him for disobeying a law. How is this possible?
(23:00) Chris Harrison is PISSED at ABC for not showing a clip of "The Bachelor" during a reality show montage at the Emmys. Harvey thinks he needs to take a breather.
(27:00) Matt Barnes cuts a sweet plea in his resisting arrest case.
(30:10) One of the funniest, scariest photos you'll ever see -- of a 6'7" eighth grader playing football.
(33:00) Two contestants sue a game show over a question they think they got right.
(37:00) The tiniest house money can buy ... and Harvey loves it.
(40:00) We take your calls!