The settlement would require Facebook to receive user consent before making "material retroactive changes" to its privacy settings. It would also require independent privacy audits for the next 20 years.

Last March, the FTC charged Google with "deceptive privacy practices" over the launch of Google Buzz. The settlement barred Google from "future privacy misrepresentations," and "required it to implement a comprehensive privacy program," which called for regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. Users would have to give Google "affirmative consent" before allowing it to change how it shared personal data.

In response to the user demand, Facebook has now added privacy controls to its mobile website, bringing users the ability to control what they share from whatever device they chose, wherever they are.

While the privacy settings are not available on the iPhone or Android apps, adding the privacy settings to the mobile website means that they are now available to all mobile users, regardless of platform.

According to Facebook's blog post on the new feature, the privacy controls are available at m.facebook.com/privacy and give users a variety of controls.

Select who can see the content you post by setting the simple control for sharing on Facebook to friends, friends of friends or everyone,

Fully customize your granular settings, if you want, and have them take effect instantly, and

Read through our comprehensive privacy guide, formatted for mobile devices.

The addition of privacy settings to Facebook's mobile offering is a great new feature, as Facebook is increasingly a tool used while out and about, rather than simply sitting at home. As the company notes in its blog post, it "noticed that people are creating content and accessing Facebook at every moment of the day, in many locations--not just from desktops."

It is currently unclear if these settings will become a part of the iPhone and Android apps, but we sure hope so. We've asked Facebook but have yet to receive a response.

Zynga wants users to know that it cares about privacy despite what the Facebook mothership is doing. Hence, Zynga has released a new "game" designed to teach users all about how the social gaming company treats user information, where it is stored and how it is used. Say hello to PrivacyVille.

"We think this is an important step in creating a recognizable interface to explain privacy, as opposed to the normal fine-print privacy statements you see on sites today. We want players to understand our policies, have fun while they learn about them, and most importantly, be incented to walk through the tutorial," Zynga wrote in an email.

There is a touch of irony here, of course. Facebook and privacy do not usually occur in the same sentence, unless there is some type of negative connotation. That goes double for when third-party application developers are added to the mix. This is a good move by Zynga to give away game points to teach users about privacy. The entire tour through PrivacyVille takes about five minutes and then there are a couple questions to answer at the end (to make sure you actually read the information in the tour) before sending the user to RewardVille.

What do you think of Zynga's attempt at transparency? Are you going to go get your zPoints by taking the PrivacyVille tour?

"To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

"We take privacy extremely seriously...Privacy means people know what they're signing up for."

That said, it would be nice if Apple were more specific on how long its partners are allowed to retain your information.

This process, of passing a user's information to an app like Gowalla, for instance. But by expressing it as part of Apple's explicit privacy information gives location the company's imprimatur. Location is here to stay.

If you're not sure whether you've sufficiently protected what you share on Facebook, then ReclaimPrivacy.org has a bookmarklet to help you be as private as you'd like.

The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of Javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings in a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you're currently sharing information via the controversial "Instant Personalization" that was unveiled last month at f8.

The site and bookmarklet are the creation of software engineer Matt Pizzimenti and is completely open-source and hosted on GitHub. According to the website, ReclaimPrivacy.org will "never see your Facebook data" and will "never share your personal information". The scanner operates entirely on the client side in the user's browser, it says.

To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmarklet
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.

You can also become a fan of Reclaim Privacy on Facebook. The site, which is hosted on Google's App Engine, was down earlier today because it had used up all of its bandwidth, so Pizzimenti has added a donation box to help cover bandwidth costs.

Today, the Canadian government found that the company had breached privacy laws.

According to the article, information included email addresses, user names, passwords, names and telephone numbers, addresses and even health details. Google has until February 1 to delete all of the information.

A report by Stoddart found that a Google engineer was responsible for the inadvertent collection of personal data when the engineer failed to follow company procedures involving legal review of code.

New research released today from Eszter Hargittai and danah boyd shows that instead of disregarding privacy, youth have increasingly modified their privacy settings on Facebook over the last year. The age of privacy over, indeed.

Our results challenge widespread assumptions that youth do not care about and are not engaged with navigating privacy. We find that, while not universal, modifications to privacy settings have increased during a year in which Facebook's approach to privacy was hotly contested. We also find that both frequency and type of Facebook use as well as Internet skill are correlated with making modifications to privacy settings.

The research finds that "most" Facebook users modified their privacy settings at least once in 2009, with this practice only becoming more common as time went on, increasing for both frequent and less frequent users. "This suggests that either Facebook's changes to the site or the public discussion about them that took place between 2009 and 2010 -- or a combination of the two -- may have influenced people's practices," reads the report.

One table in the report helps illustrate how privacy has increasingly become a concern of users, even the 18- and 19-year-olds the research focuses on. The table shows how, over the past year, the number of users modifying their privacy settings has increased dramatically. The most interesting changes come in the first and last columns, with the number of users who had never changed their settings dropping to almost none and the number of users who changed their settings four or more times nearly doubling for all current Facebook users.

In addition to looking at how often respondents altered their Facebook privacy settings, the report also examines their confidence in doing so. The researchers asked respondents to rate, on a scale from one to five, their confidence level performing a number of online tasks, from changing their privacy settings, to posting a comment on a blog, to uploading a video to a site such as YouTube. Surprisingly, the changing of Facebook privacy settings beat out every other of nine online activities.

In the end, boyd and Hargittai paint a picture of a generation of users that not only care about their privacy, but take steps to ensure it.

Overall, our data show that far from being nonchalant and unconcerned about privacy matters, the majority of young adult users of Facebook are engaged with managing their privacy settings on the site at least to some extent. The frequency with which they adjust their settings and their confidence in doing so may vary, but most report modifying their settings.

If actions speak louder than words, it certainly doesn't look like the age of privacy has ended. Only that small percentage that didn't modify their privacy settings seem to be agreeing with the idea of broadcasting their information to the world. The rest, it would seem, still like to keep some things private.

There goes that argument, huh?

A new report by Carnegie Mellon University, authored by Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, states that online privacy policies take an average of 10 minutes to read. If every U.S. web user read the privacy policy at every site they went to, the time spent reading privacy policies would total 44.3 billion hours per year. Their recommendation? Regulation. They concluded that regulation might be necessary to "provide basic privacy protections."

Of course, you can imagine a lot of companies are not happy over this proposal, specifically those that take advantage of long privacy policies which they know no one reads. Online advertisers are the worst for abusing the average user's ignorance over how the internet works. They deploy behavioral targeting platforms that track users and their behavior across the net. Instructions for opting out of these programs may be found in the privacy policies, but few people take the time to read them and discover how to do so.

Cranor, who's also a member of the EFF, thinks that people shouldn't have to read these extensive privacy policies in order to protect themselves - the FTC should get involved and regulate if companies aren't willing to improve the readability of these online documents.

Should Privacy Policies Be Regulated?

If a privacy policy is long, does that mean it fails? We've seen the privacy policies now sent in the mail to us from our credit card companies. They aren't the most readable documents either, but they're legal.

Privacy policies today only seem to be there for the hyper-aware online citizen for whom privacy is a major concern. The rest of us just hear about the breaches of trust when one of those folks takes the time to read the long and boring legalize and then warns the rest of us of their findings.

The problem with privacy policies isn't just their length, though. Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, argues that "It's not only that they're long, but they're also complicated. They're not really written for your average Internet user to understand them."

The average internet user? You mean those people who access the internet for twice a day for a total of 20 hours per month? The ones that spend less than one minute per page? Something tells us they're not going to read privacy policies no matter how clear and easy-to-understand they become.

Image Credits: Computer Eye, Mikey G. Ottowa; Cameras, Urbankudos

The letter, first reported by CNET, is addressed to Google CEO Eric Schmidt and signed by "Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, and the heads of the data protection authorities in France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom".

It then calls for Google to set an example to other companies in regards to user privacy, making the following requests:

• collecting and processing only the minimum amount of personal information necessary to achieve the identified purpose of the product or service;
• providing clear and unambiguous information about how personal information will be used to allow users to provide informed consent;
• creating privacy-protective default settings;
• ensuring that privacy control settings are prominent and easy to use;
• ensuring that all personal data is adequately protected, and
• giving people simple procedures for deleting their accounts and honouring their requests in a timely way.

While Google was sued in the U.S. following its roll-out of Google Buzz, the letter notably lacks any U.S. representation.

In all, the letter makes some reasonable requests of a company that likely knows more about us than our closest of friends, and we are looking forward to reading Google's response.

The new policy takes effect on March 1. It's mandatory for all Google users. While there is no "opt-out," there's no such thing as opting out of a privacy policy for any Web service you use; the major change here is just that Google is now one service. Users' privacy preferences are unchanged, but the new arrangement makes it easier for Google to bring user data across its services. Google is steaming ahead toward integrating search, email, YouTube, social and work, so it's getting the legal ducks in a row to make the new Google one continuous experience.

The new privacy policy replaces over 60 separate documents with just one that's also easier to understand. The major change is to make clear that signed-in Google users should treat all Google services as unified, and that data from one can be shared with another.

The new terms of service explain the terminology Google uses in clear language, and it consolidates many of Google's existing terms, so users don't have to keep track of as much Googlese.

A few services, including Books, Chrome and Wallet, have industry-specific privacy laws, so those are keeping their own privacy notices.

There are no surprises here, but Google's new policies will make it easier for Google to personalize content across services. These can be helpful, little things like spelling suggestions, life-savers like meeting reminders based on location or traffic conditions, or core pieces of Google's business, like personalized ads across Google sites.

Google users should take a few minutes to peruse the new policies. You can see what data Google has about you via your Google Dashboard. If you're unfamiliar with the ways Google uses its user data, check out its new Good to Know website.

One quarter of those surveyed who reverted back to Firefox 2 cited privacy as their biggest issue with Firefox 3. In an effort to curb privacy fears, Firefox 3.5 allows for private browsing, the ability to clear a portion of the history and website blocking to stop certain websites from appearing in browser history.

If Mozilla's little location bar raised this much attention, imagine the barriers facing shared browsing services and history trackers. Skabble, Hooeey and Me.dium (Now OneRiot) must have faced enormous scrutiny around user privacy. It's interesting to see privacy become an issue with browsing habits while in other areas we allow so much of our private lives to trickle into the ether.

59% of women and 52% of men say that they have privacy concerns when it comes to the apps they download onto their smartphones. Those older than 45 were the most concerned about their privacy, while those between the ages of 25 and 34 were the least concerned.

This Nielsen study specifically targeted those mobile subscribers who have downloaded an app within the last 30 days, so this is a demographic that is familiar with apps and that, at first blush, could be open to trying out the spate of new services that utilize location-based data. That could involve "checking in" or that could just saying "yes" to transmitting GPS data in order to deliver specific content.

Regardless, the Nielsen study does seem to suggest that, despite the popularity of location-based apps, many consumers are still reluctant to share this sort of information. Only 8% of women and 12% of men say that they aren't concerned about their privacy and location data.

In a letter (.pdf) sent on Wednesday, David Vladek, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote that the FTC would end its inquiry because of Google's commitments to privacy.

According to the letter, Google "made assurances to the FTC that the company has not used and will not use any of the payload data collected [...] now or in the future." Along with this, Google addressed a number of the FTC's concerns, including "appointing a director of privacy for engineering and product management; adding core privacy training for key employees; and incorporating a formal privacy review process into the design phases of new payload data as soon as possible."

"Because of these commitments," wrote Vladek, "we are ending our inquiry into this matter at this time."

What do you think? Did Google get off easy or was this the right and just decision in the end? Should a company that collected this sort of private data be punished, even though they did not use the data and have promised to delete it? Or should it be "all's well that ends well" and let that be the end of it?

For the last two weeks, it seems like anything anyone can talk about is the fact that our GPS-enabled smartphones are tracking our location. First, it was the iPhone, then the Android and finally Windows Phone 7. Why has this struck such a chord?

According to a study by TRUSTe, a leading Internet privacy service provider, privacy is the leading concern for smartphone users, with security following close behind.

TRUSTe's survey points out why this story erupted so quickly. The survey, conducted in 2011, "revealed a strikingly high level of concern around personal information and data privacy," the company writes.

Privacy concerns weren't only the primary concern stated by respondents, but 77% said that they don't want to share their location with app owners and developers. Beyond that, 85% of respondents said that they were uncomfortable with advertiser tracking. If 77% of respondents don't want to knowingly share their location with apps

ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about a study last week that had similar findings. According to that study, published by Portland, Oregon digital marketing firm White Horse, 56% of smartphone owners surveyed said they knew about location-based services and 39% of respondents said they used them.