We wanted to let you know as soon as we could that the Spam Ratings and
Cleanzer web sites and Firefox Add-ons will be closing in early
September 2012. We wanted to give you as much notice as possible so
that you have time to transfer any emails or information you need and
uninstall the Firefox Add-Ons to as you won’t be able to access these
from early September.

We have been proud to help so many of you to be alerted to web sites
that abuse your privacy and bombard your inbox with unwanted email, and
to help you protect yourselves from these. Whilst we would have liked
to do more to develop these services, we don’t have the time to give
the service the full attention it deserves – and we don’t want the
service and our standards to slip.

Instead we have put our support behind Allow – a service that shares
similar goals to Spam Ratings and believes you should be able to
protect and control your personal information. You can find out more
about Allow at www.i-allow.com and we would recommend that you take
a look at their services and products. Given how much we value your
support and the importance we place on you and the privacy cause, we
have managed to secure our members a three month free trial.

So when signing up, visit https://my.i-allow.com/user/register and
please use the following promotional code: spam3mf. Please note your
exclusive offer expires on 14 September, so register as soon as
possible!

We wanted to confirm that all of your personal data is completely safe.
It will not be transferred to any party or used in any way. We respect
you too much for that. The Spam Ratings Team can also continue to
answer any standard support queries relating the Spam Ratings and
Cleanzer web sites and Firefox Add-ons before they close in early
September.

Thank you so much for your support.

And remember please visit https://my.i-allow.com/user/register as
Allow has some exciting developments in the pipeline.

The Spam Ratings Team

Online privacy is one of the most important issues facing us today and will determine how we use the internet in the future. In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

Business social network LinkedIn is the latest in a sorry line of major online businesses guilty of serious security breaches. More than 6 million LinkedIn passwords were distributed online. Security experts recommend users should change their passwords immediately.

The snooper’s charter

The UK Government’s ”online snooper’s charter” has created a fierce privacy debate. Internet and phone firms will be required to track everyone’s email, Twitter, Facebook and other internet use under new legislation – and the government is even footing a lot of the bill. But the measure is continuing to attract fierce criticism with former shadow home secretary David Davis calling it “expensive, unnecessary and a huge invasion of everyone’s privacy”.

The organization in charge of introducing new Internet addresses to rival “.com” briefly suspended access to some of the documents on its website after a privacy gaffe. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said it had mistakenly published the postal addresses of some individuals information that was meant to be private.

Facebook trolls 

New UK government proposals say victims have a right to know who is behind malicious messages without the need for costly legal battles. The powers will be balanced by measures to prevent false claims in order to get material removed. But privacy advocates are worried websites might end up divulging user details in a wider range of cases. The measures follow a victory for Nicola Brooks had been falsely branded a paedophile and drug dealer by users – known as trolls – on Facebook. Facebook, which did not contest the order, will now reveal the IP addresses of people who had abused her so she can prosecute them.

The US online advertising industry, web developers, and privacy advocates continue to vigorously debating a standard called Do Not Track designed to prevent websites tracking users without their consent. Microsoft has upped the ante by suggesting it may enable Do Not Track by default in its Internet Explorer 10 going much further than advertisers want.

The Spam Ratings Team

]]> http://www.spamratings.com/blog/the-weakest-link/feed 0 http://www.spamratings.com/blog/the-cookie-cutter http://www.spamratings.com/blog/the-cookie-cutter#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 10:25:15 +0000 Alex Robinson http://www.spamratings.com/?p=2284 Read More…]]> Online privacy is one of the most important issues facing us today and will determine how we use the internet in the future. In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK privacy watchdog, is write to 50 top UK websites to find out what actions have been taken towards compliance with a new EU e-Privacy Directive which requires websites to ensure users opt in to receive cookies – which are used to track online behaviour. The new law gives the ICO the power to fine companies up to £500,000 for breaches of privacy regulations. However the ICO has said it is not “suddenly going to launch a torrent of enforcement action,” and that it would use formal warnings rather than fines to encourage websites to comply. The news comes as it has been revealed that most UK government websites currently fail to comply with new laws on cookies.

So is the ICO’s bark worse than its bite?

A Facebook Face Off

Will anything slowdown the Facebook stock market juggernaut? Perhaps privacy concerns will. The company is being sued for $15bn – almost as much as the $16bn raised in its record breaking initial public offering – for tracking users against their wishes, even after they have logged out of their Facebook accounts. There is little doubt that under the public company spotlight Facebook will be under growing pressure to maximise revenues by finding more and more ways to target adverts – and that implies less and less privacy for users. “This is not just a damages action, but a groundbreaking digital-privacy rights case that could have wide and significant legal and business implications,” said David Straite, a partner at Stewarts Law, the US law firm that is representing the companies in the class-action lawsuit.

No Twacking

Twitter has broken ranks with the likes of Facebook and Google to say it will honour requests from users who do not want their online behaviour tracked. Twitter said it will officially support “Do Not Track,” a standardized privacy initiative that has been heavily promoted by the US Federal Trade Commission, online privacy advocates and Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox Web browse. The microblogging site said when Do Not Track is activated it will stop tailoring your account based on the places you visit on the Web that have Twitter buttons on them. We bet most Twitter users didn’t even realize this sort of tracking was going on – but it is the tip of the iceberg when compared to other major websites.

The Spam Ratings Team

In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

In our last blog we covered President Obama’s Consumer Bill of Rights – which is a (tentative) step in the right direction when it comes to protecting our privacy and very personal details online.

Now the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published its long awaited detailed guidance on protecting consumers from invasive adverts and cookies.

The summary of a weighty 112 pages - a lot of advice and should do’s but not many must do’s. It is unclear if this will really tackle the huge and escalating problem of online privacy. The guidance is welcome but it comes with much more bark than bite. The general theme is self regulation -  companies that adhere to the guidelines will be viewed “favourably” by the FTC, while it says it will “take action against” companies that “engage in unfair or deceptive practices” or that pledge compliance but violate the rules anyway.

The central plank is Do No Track initiatives where internet users can opt out of their details be automatically harvested by online cookies and advertisements. It is working with organisations such as the World Wide Web Consortium to create a standard that can be adopted by all browsers and websites.

Crucially however, websites are not obliged to abide by do-not-track requests and, in practice, the vast majority of sites fail to respect these types of privacy requests. This has to change – and change quickly – and only tougher legislation is likely to make this happen.

In other privacy news:

- An influential group of UK lawmakers has called on Google to introduce an algorithm to remove search links found to be in breach of privacy – or face legislation to force it to do so. It follows complaints from ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley about the difficulty he faced in getting a video removed from the internet.

- Security firms like AVG have started to push their own software which will enable users to actively block some advertising networks from sharing data – going further than the US Do Not Track initiatives.

- Enterprise spam filters are blocking less junk mail, according to independent tests from Virus Bulletin. During a comparative of 20 corporate email filtering products, several missed more than twice as much spam as in the past.

- The fastest-growing new social networking website, Pinterest – which works like a virtual scrapbook filled with pretty pictures of outfits, recipes, and other things users like – has a growing problem of fake users spamming the site to make money off its advertising potential.

- How do you define spam? For those who have always wondered why some emails arrive in Gmail’s spam folder, Google has updated the service to explain to what determines what spam is and why emails get blocked … Full explanation here

The Spam Ratings Team

In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

At last the US authorities appear to be taking online privacy more seriously. With European authorities looking to do the same it is clear online privacy is now a major political and consumer issue.

President Obama’s administration has presented measures to protect online privacy that includes a Consumer Bill of Rights and a Do-Not-Track feature for browsers.

The much needed features of the Consumer Bill of Rights are all things that Spam Ratings is happy to give a big thumbs up to including:

Individual Control: Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data organisations collect from them and how they use it.
Transparency: The right to easily understandable information about privacy and security practices.
Respect for Context: The right to expect that organizations will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
Security: The right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
Access and Accuracy: The right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data are inaccurate.
Focused Collection: The right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
Accountability: The right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

The winds of political change have been stoked up by, among other things, Google’s shock announcement of how it plans to share and merge our personal data across a range of its services. Online privacy concerns are set to continue to grow in line with the explosion of data usage across multiple devices.

Separately, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recommended the creation of a “Do Not Track” tool to let consumers curb advertisers from studying their online activity to target ads. An alliance representing Google, Yahoo, AOL and other leading ad-delivery companies committed to adopting the Do Not Track technology when it is built into web browsers – which is expected to happen later this year.

But the real concern is do the measures above really have enough teeth to bite the growing number of online privacy offenders. True the FTC can punish those who commit to the Do Not Track initiative and then fall foul of it. But perhaps fearful of the time and effort required in creating detailed legislation, the Obama administration only appears to be advocating limited enforcement authority for its Consumer Bill of Rights – leaving it largely up to online businesses to act voluntarily.

If businesses haven’t acted so far – why will they suddenly start now? We need decisive and hard hitting action urgently if we are to protect our online privacy for the future.

The Spam Ratings Team

In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

- Every year on 28th January governments and companies alike come together to promote Data Privacy Day and remind us how important it is for us to protect our private data from getting into the wrong hands. This year Data Privacy Data day is particularly poignant, as the privacy debate reaches fierce new heights.

- Google has upped the ante. The company plans to scrap over 60 separate privacy notices and replace them with a single, master policy – backed up be a fanfare of publicity and PR. This in itself may be no bad thing if it makes its privacy rules more transparent.  However, in practice it means that data from Google’s range of products, including email service Gmail and video-streaming site YouTube, can be shared and used to provide ever more intrusive advertising based on our private details. The move raises some serious privacy and regulatory issues.

- Google and Facebook are already walking on a regulatory tightrope as privacy concerns escalate. After two years of investigation and discussion the European Commission has proposed a new set of online-privacy rules that would allow users to demand that information about them be deleted by companies such as Facebook and Google, unless said sites have legitimate reasons to hold onto the information. The so called “right to be forgotten” rules could also force companies to own up to data breaches or face fines.  A European Commissioner spokesperson was reported as saying: “These rules are particularly aimed at young people as they are not always as aware as they could be about the consequence of putting photos and other information on social-network websites, or about the various privacy settings available.” Spam Ratings believes young and old alike need more privacy protection and data rights.

- In a timely reminder that our personal data is a risk every day, it has emerged that people using their mobile phone on O2′s mobile networks in the UK to browse websites have been inadvertently handing over their phone number to the website owner. The privacy breach means that site owners could be collecting the phone numbers of visitors which could then be used for telephone and SMS marketing without the phone owner’s consent – potentially opening customers to a myriad of SMS spams and scams. So it raises an important question – even if a company has a privacy policy in place does it take it seriously enough?

The Spam Ratings Team

In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

- Computer giant IBM has made a chilling prediction about the future of online privacy. It heralds the death of what it defines as spam. “In five years, unsolicited advertisements may feel so personalised and relevant it may seem spam is dead,” IBM said. It predicts real time analytics will integrate data from “all the facets of your life” – such as social networks. At Spam Ratings we are not sure which is worst. If anything ‘targeted spam’ is even more worrying as it opens up some serious privacy concerns.

- Meanwhile research from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse counts the number of records leaked that contain information useful to identity thieves, such as Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, driver’s license numbers and medical information. It found 2011 was a significant year for data security breaches. PRC tracked 535 breaches involving 30.4 million sensitive records. This brings the total reported records breached in the US alone since 2005 to 543 million. “This is a conservative number,” says PRC Director Beth Givens. “We generally learn about breaches that garner media attention. Unfortunately, many do not.”

- Two of the biggest global privacy culprits this year were Sony PlayStation which discovered that the hackers gained access to 101.6 million records, including 12 million unencrypted credit card numbers and email marketing company Epsilon which had a security breach that may have exposed up to 250 million email addresses.

- Privacy group TRUSTe predicts US authorities will start going after websites for privacy violations in 2012 and that companies will start to be held accountable for tracking conducted by third parties on their sites. Meanwhile the EU has rejected a code written by internet companies that requires websites to seek permission from users before gathering information that can be used to identify them personally, giving website visitors the ability to “opt out” from having their data gathered. The EU is pushing for a tougher stance on alerting users to the information that is collected about them as they surf the internet.

Following growing consumer concerns the battle for online privacy is certainly set to heat up further in 2012 – and the Spam Ratings team will continue to lead the fight.

The Spam Ratings team wish you a very Happy Christmas and New Year

With the economy going from bad to worse desperate retailers have launched sales earlier than normal – and with it a flood of unwanted marketing emails.

Latest research from Spam Ratings shows the shocking scale of email marketing abuses carried out by some of the biggest brands in the UK.

Detailed analysis of sales and marketing emails sent by 100 leading UK brands during December showed sales and marketing emails sent from top brands has so far risen by more than a third in December compared to last year – which itself saw a huge rise on the year before.

If you want your inbox to have a Happy 2012 you can stop unwanted marketing for good. Our free consumer tools are here to help.

Following high profile press exposing major brands breaching best practice, ASDA contacted Spam Ratings for its help and then confirmed it would change its email policy. This very important step and a major undertaking that could stop millions of unexpected and unasked for emails being distributed to the supermarket’s customers.

However, more than a year later privacy policies on some of its major websites have not changed – automatically opting in users to marketing and other unwanted emails and breaching best practice guidelines.

Lets remind you what ASDA said:

Dominic Burch, head of corporate communications at ASDA said:

“ASDA is happy to work with Spam Ratings as it reviews its email policy as part of its ongoing commitment to provide great customer service.” An ASDA spokeswoman told the UK’s best selling internet magazine Web User: “The Asda.com marketing team are already underway evaluating this issue with reference to the over 20 transactional websites available online today. Part of this project includes the review of opt-in policy, which will of course adhere to best ICO guidelines.

“This will then allow the development of a clear preference centre to manage customers channel preference. Once we’ve completed this we’d love to work with Spam Ratings and gain this accreditation,” she continued.

Given the lack of any movement Spam Ratings has to ask – would you trust ASDA with your private data?

In our regular series we curate the latest news and views that are defining this debate.

- Hurrah! The good news is that global spam in on the fall. Global spam fell to the lowest level in three years according to anti-virus group Symantec. The bad news – spam still represents a whopping 70.5% of emails. And this understates the very real problem that internet users face. Official spam figures don’t even include the huge number of unwanted emails we get from websites and corporates. Our research shows this is getting far worse. More than three quarters of the emails that do get through spam filters are simple not wanted – and this figure continues to rise. Spam Ratings’ battle against unwanted email continues apace.

- Symantec goes on to warn internet users about growing social media spam where spurious links seem to be sent from friends. The US is the biggest source of spam, sending 28% of the total number of messages, followed by India at 9%; Russia, 5.7%; Brazil, 4.3% and China at 4%, Symantec said. The most popular topics for spam messages are hawking pharmaceuticals, watches and jewelry, unsolicited newsletters and adult-related content.

- Be wary of emails offering glittering Christmas bargains. During the recent Cyber Monday – so called as it is the busiest online shopping day of the year, security group Sophos found emails offering massive savings on the must have gadgets of the moment. An iPad 2 for only $17 – if it looks too good to be true it usually is!

- A recent report by accounting giant KPMG said: “…consumers’ concerns over privacy and data security have increased over the last few years and companies across all sectors need to take this concern seriously. Whether its retailers or banks, consumers want transparency as to what companies do about data security and they want third parties to certify this security.” Here here say all of us at Spam Ratings!

- Great article in the New Yorker which explains the concept of The Exponential Law of Privacy Loss (or TELPL, pronounced “tell people.”). In a nutshell the more we do online, the better companies get at tracking us, and the more accurate and detailed the data they glean from us becomes. The amount of data that they have grows exponentially over time – worried – you should be. Click here to see the whole article: http://nyr.kr/vCB70u

- Finally Canada’s privacy commissioner released a statement saying that web users should always be able to opt out of online tracking used by companies to provide them with targeted advertising. The ‘cookie cutter’ battle is set to rage over 2012 and will be a major privacy theme of next year.

The Spam Ratings Team