Anything to declare?

Ah, America! The world's brightest beacon of democracy and freedom; the New World of limitless opportunity, where hard work and fair play are rewarded with the fabulous bounties of the American Dream.And who can forget that America was built upon the exertions and human capital of the millions of immigrants - themselves often refugees from war, slavery and famine?Modern day arrivals in the USA have a slightly different experience from these pioneering immigrants. Gone are the humiliating medical inspections, where those suspected of illness and physical defects were marked with chalk symbols. Instead, visitors are subjected to a terrifying ordeal of interrogation by customs officials, including such charmingly naive questions as "Is it your intention to overthrow the government of the United States?" (WS Gilbert famously answered: "Sole purpose of visit".)But now it's not just fearsome feds with sunglasses and ear pieces that travellers have to worry about: they could risk having their personal data compromised, including fingerprints, employment history and credit information.It all stems from a company called Clear, which used to speed its customers through customs for an annual payment of $200. To do this, they asked their customers for the personal data that customs officials need to know about travellers. A quarter of a million customers signed up to Clear's service and, for a while, enjoyed VIP treatment at US airports, being rushed through customs and immigration while the plebs queued and sweated.Unfortunately, Clear shut down its operations last week, and the fate of customers' personal data hangs in the balance. What's interesting is that the company says that it will continue to hold onto this sensitive information, which could still be used by another Register Traveller programme. In other words, the data is a business asset that could be parcelled up and sold on to another firm - as long as that company is in the same line of business.This is proof - if proof be needed - that personal data is no nothing more than another commodity to be bought and sold. It's worth noting that Clear's privacy policy states that "We do not sell or give lists or compilations of the personal information of our members or applicants to any business or non-profit organization." Unless, that is, we go bust.We've noted before that companies often rely on burying objectionable practices deep within their Terms and Conditions, but if bankruptcy means companies can ignore their own privacy policies, that's a huge blow to data protection. Even if Clear's successor abides by the most stringent data protection policies, the transfer of such large amounts of sensitive information from one organisation to another is a fraudster's paradise, with plenty of opportunity for data to go missing.

Misunderstood NebuAd Forced to Close down

This week American online advertising company NebuAd closed its doors for good and with it disappeared a much needed new revenue stream for ISPs.The company ran out of money, and seemed to be struggling after the US Congress held hearings last year to examine its Internet practice which was deemed to be an invasion of privacy. Congress subsequently dropped the investigation, of course. But whilst NebuAd's customers took the very proper position not to use the service whilst the investigation was going on, the systems didn't seem to go back on, NebuAd seems to have lost cash and closed shop.NebuAd gathered information at an ISP level to serve customers with relevant ads.Unfortunately, the upshot seems to be that ISPs have lost out on a great opportuinity. The ad revenue, which would have been shared with ISPs, could have been invested in improving existing technology, cutting overall costs or even used to reduce the price of services for existing and potential customers.NebuAd explicitly stated in their privacy policy that they would "specifically not store or use any information relating to confidential medical information, racial or ethnic origins, religious beliefs, or sexuality which are tied to personally identifiable information ('sensitive personal information')."However, if NebuAd actually used technology that made the customer anonymous, hasn't the public lost something that would have protected their privacy as well? And how many people are opting into services - either inadvertently or lazily - and are giving their consent for companies to totally profile them without any attempt at anonymity. It'll be a very sad occurrence if the end of this company means the end of any attempt at anonymity by companies offering advertising on the Internet, with the excuse that, "Well, you opted in, so we can glean whatever information we like about you."

Google fails

Congratulations students of the globe! For anyone from the ages of 5 to 15 can enjoy Google’s new attempt at structured data search: Google Squared. And that’s presumably the only group of people that would ever consider using it. Remember when you were eight and your teacher asked you to make a pretty table on British Monarchy with all the monarchs of Britain including their children, spouses and important dates? How you pored over huge encyclopaedias to get all the information? Well, Google Squared officially heralds the end of early education as all these tasks are completed in a matter of seconds for our burgeoning historians and other putative scientists. If only it were that easy. Just as Babel Fish translate could only ever get a student 12/20 on French translation homework after its launch all those years ago, Google Squared fails to achieve… well anything it’s going for really. A search for the British Monarchy in an attempt to tabulate a chronological factfile brings up a table with the following order – George VI, George II, George V. The genius that is Squared then goes off on a little jaunt that includes the Act of the Union, the Irish Free State, Buckingham Palace and the House of Orange. This just gets embarrassing: the picture accompanying the House of Orange? Why of course! Its Gemma Arterton arriving for the ‘Orange’ BAFTAs at the Royal Opera ‘House’. This is surely Google gone mad. Actually we shouldn’t really be surprised; to be fair to Google, nowadays the Bond Girl must get more hits than the Dutch royals.It’s rather life affirming to know that even the great god Google isn’t completely infallible. This is an exciting day indeed. This revelation is like those wonderful moments when that beautiful woman who walks like she is better than everyone else trips and falls flat on her face on Oxford Street. At the Christmas Light switch on. On the podium. And the woman is Kate Moss.One must presumably conclude that the only reason Google released this in such an awkward condition was to distract attention from somewhere else: another attempt to make searching intelligent recently arrived in the form of Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine. It proclaims to ‘generate output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.’ This means, instead of producing lists of useless links or grids of questionable information, it creates pages to answer your search, to the best of its ability. When asked, ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?’, the clever engine replies, ‘The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. (according to Bob Dylan).’ Indeed.

UK Organisations Failing to Follow Email Marketing Best Practice

Have you ever tried to subscribe to a mailing list or newsletter online and found that it took forever to sign up? Or that you needed to create an account first, or you couldn’t even find the box to put your email address in? Well, you aren’t the only one.New research from the email deliverability services company Return Path has found that two out of every five UK companies make it difficult for customers to subscribe to their email marketing programmes. As Return Path's Vice President for European Operations, Guy Shelton says: ‘Giving subscribers a great email experience isn't just “nice to do”; it is, of course, an essential marketing best practice.’ This great experience doesn’t just cover the sign up process but the content of the emails too.However, even when customers manage to sign up, out of the companies that successfully delivered a welcome message to the inbox only 45 per cent included a special offer for the new customer. By including a special offer, companies are able to show their thanks and start the relationship well with the customer, meaning they are more likely to read their emails and use the company in the future.Furthermore, by failing to follow email marketing best practice, many UK organisations risk generating spam complaints. According to Return Path, if a welcome message does not arrive within 24 hours it increases the chance of the subscriber marking the subsequent email as spam. This harms the company’s “sender reputation”, which reflects the likelihood of their emails being delivered successfully.But is it just too difficult and time-consuming to follow best practice? Not according to Return Path. Guy Shelton explains that ‘The steps that organisations need to improve their sender reputation are quick and simple to take’ and the easy steps can help organisations ‘build strong subscriber relationships, experience better deliverability, increase conversions and improve return on investment (ROI).’Return Path’s research has pointed out some major problems with email marketing in the UK, and it will be interesting to see how companies react. Return Path believe that it is easy to get right, and with their advice, companies can greatly improve their email reputation and therefore make more money.

The lady's for turning

We've taken the odd swipe at Jacqui Smith over the last few months, so it only seems fair to applaud her decision to scrap the Home Office's planned über-database of communications data.The database would have collected data on all electronic correspondence, such as the time, date and length of communication (and, of course, who contacted whom).Humble Jacqui said that she recognised the public's concerns that a giant database would be a further step toward a surveillance society. And, in a nice little turn of phrase, she said, "To be clear, there are absolutely no plans for a single store."No longer any plans, Jacqui, no longer.Of course the cynics will say that Labour couldn't possibly get away with ploughing hundreds of millions of pounds into a deeply un-popular government IT project in light of last week's austerity budget.We couldn't possibly comment.Anyway, the upshot of all this is that ISPs are now responsible for intercepting and storing the data that crosses their networks. To this end, the Home Office have earmarked £2 billion to help ISPs to expand their storage capabilities.Mobile and fixed line operators will be required to process and link the data together to build complete profiles of every UK internet user's online activity. Police and the intelligence services would then access the profiles, which will be stored for 12 months, on a case-by-case basis.Don't be surprised if even this plan is quietly dropped by the Conservatives after the 2010 election.A final point - John Reid, the frankly terrifying former Home Secretary, argues in an opinion piece today that communications data is vital to identifying serious criminals. In his short but predictably manipulative piece, he kicks off with a tear-jerker about a murdered 17 year old whose killers were brought to justice by communications data. This, he says, happened in 2007.So you see, Reid shoots himself in the foot before he's reached the end of his first paragraph, by showing that police then already had adequate access to communications data.He then comes up with a classic piece of patronising lip service: "Used in the right way, and subject to important safeguards, communications data can play a critical role in keeping us safe."Presumably, these would be the safeguards that ensured only 36,989,300 pieces of personal information were lost by the government in 2008. As for using it in the right way, it's as if he hadn't heard of the scandal of local authorities using the RIPA legislation to spy on dog fouling and catchment areas.If we really do need a giant central database, they'll need to do a lot better than this to convince the public.

Pirate Bay No Longer A Safe Haven for Internet Buccaneers

Last week a Swedish Court found four founders of file-sharing site, The Pirate Bay, guilty of “assisting making available copyrighted content” but what should ISPs make of this ruling and is it somewhat of a poisoned chalice?Similar to UK ISPs, The Pirate Bay had previously cited “mere-conduit” status but, unlike UK ISPs, had used it as a means of evading the long arm of the law. A quick look at their ‘About Us’ reveals:-“Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site.”This latest ruling is set to be fought and will not sink the site but it’s definitely a sign of stormy waters ahead.Some commentators have also speculated that search engines such as Google or Ask may be in the firing line because they can return results that link to copyright infringed material. Outlaw’s Struan Robertson argues these search engines have nothing to worry about because links to copyright infringed material are not central to their business model.“A crucial part of the case against The Pirate Bay was that the vast majority of content that people sought through the site was infringing copyright. Google returns some links to infringing content and eBay hosts some auctions for pirated goods but that does not make their operations illegal.”On the other hand this does not bode well for ISPs. If a website can be found guilty of assisting in making copyrighted material available then it logically follows that ISPs who, through no intent of their own, are directly involved in the distribution of copyright infringed material could suffer.

Facebook moves the goalposts

This week we've heard more rumblings of discontent from Facebook users - they're unhappy that the social networking site has moved the goalposts over the much-hyped "user vote" on changing Facebook's Terms and Conditions.The story first emerged last February, when Facebook casually mentioned that it had granted itself a licence to all its users' content in perpetuity, even if they deleted their account. Cue a predictable collective wailing and gnashing of teeth from millions of users who, almost by definition, are pretty clued up on the web.The backlash prompted a partial backdown from Facebook, who attempted to mollify its members by saying that it would agree to drop the proposal if 25 per cent of users voted against.This week, that threshold has quietly been raised to 30 per cent. What's more, a significant number of Facebook users have been disenfranchised by the decision to allow votes only from those who've used their accounts in the last thirty days.Simon Davies of Privacy International is so confident that the 30 per cent threshold won't be achieved that he's promised to eat his shorts if he's wrong. (As if there wasn't already a good enough reason to get voting - Ed.)At the time of writing, 73.11% of respondents have voted against Mark's Terms of Use, but unfortunately "only" 284,473 have voted in total - barely a tenth of one per cent of Facebook's 200 million regular users.So Zuckerberg is really expecting 60 million users to vote? And isn't he concerned that the respondents, while still so "few", should be so overwhelmingly opposed to his plan?Here at Data Grub, we're rather disappointed with the preternaturally young Facebook CEO. Changing the rules like this is pretty childish, after all, and we reckon he could do much better.Zuckerberg really needs to take lessons from a master manipulator, such as the late Saddam Hussein or even the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il himself. We'd love to see the People's Democratic Republic of Facebook announce that 99.8% of members had voted in favour of the rule change, on a 100% turnout. Read Zuckerberg's plans for Facebook here.