Apparently, people do not appreciate technology that tracks their whereabouts. An article from Splash Gear discussed OnStar’s latest run in the news with this issue while The Telegraph discussed Facebook’s.
According to the article, OnStar released a notice to customers telling them that it would be collecting information on their locations in addition to other data. The company reserved the right to share this information with anyone, even for marketing purposes. Some customers may have been OK with this, but what really seemed to anger users was OnStar’s claim that even when users cancelled their account they could continue to track their movements. This claim grabbed the attention of three senators who called on the FCC to investigate the company’s policy. “Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) raised objections of his own in a letter that he wrote to the FCC calling the new policy by OnStar, ‘one of the most brazen invasions of privacy in recent memory.'”
Raising some of the same fear in users, Facebook has been recently accused of ‘tracking’ users even when they have logged out of their account. According to the article from The Telegraph, Nik Cubrilovic, an Australian technology entrepreneur, noticed that even after he was logged-out of Facebook, the browser continued to send cookies that could be used to track what other sites he visited. Gregg Stefancik, a Facebook engineer, denied the cookies were designed to track logged-out users. Recently, Facebook updated its look and functions and introduced its “frictionless” sharing feature which automatically shares details of what users are watching or reading on the web.
It’s easy to see how the recent advancements in online technology have caused users to feel like their privacy is being compromised. As a society, how much information about ourselves do we really want to share with each other?
SOURCE: The Telegraph
Splash Gear
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