Inside Google

“However Google configures this, it’s clear that it’s all about competing with Facebook and keeping users logged into Google’s services,” John Simpson, consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog, told TechNewsWorld. “Google is terrified of Facebook’s gains and is doing everything possible to fight them.”

The FTC report is being celebrated by groups like nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, whose director John Simpson said in a statement: “The FTC’s support of Do Not Track means that consumers should have a meaningful way to control the tracking of their online activities by the end of the year.”

“Data brokers buy, compile and sell a wealth of highly personal information about you, but there’s no way to find out what they have or if it’s correct,” John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project, said in a statement. “That’s why the FTC’s call for legislation in this area is so important.”

Consumer privacy advocates mostly favored the commission’s final report. “Data brokers buy, compile and sell a wealth of highly personal information about you, but there’s no way to find out what they have or if it’s correct,” said John M. Simpson, the head of Consumer Watchdog, which advocates for digital privacy. “That’s why the F.T.C.’s call for legislation in this area is so important.”

“An important consensus is emerging on the need to take significant steps to protect online privacy rights,” says John Simpson, spokesman for the non-profit Consumer Watchdog advocacy group.

John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project, said the FTC should have called for legislation on Do Not Track as well. But overall the report represents progress on data privacy, he said.

Following the report’s release, Consumer Watchdog, an organization whose name leaves little to imagination as to its purpose, praised the FTC for supporting the ‘Do Not Track’ mechanism that will hopefully return control of data collection to the people of the internet. Consumer Watchdog has been at this fight for a couple of years, working to get consumer privacy reform at the top of the government’s to-do list. “Those efforts are paying off,” said John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “The FTC’s support of Do Not Track means that consumers should have a meaningful way to control the tracking of their online activities by the end of the year.”

SANTA MONICA, CA — Consumer Watchdog praised the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy report released today supporting a Do Not Track Mechanism that will help give people control of the collection and use of their personal data when they are online.

Says FTC Action Needed to Stop Google Engineers Playing ‘Fast and Loose’ With Consumers’ Private Information

Santa Monica, CA – Consumer Watchdog welcomed reports today confirming that the Federal Trade Commission and European regulators are investigating Google for violating the online privacy choices of consumers using the Safari web browser on Apple computers, iPhones and iPads. In a letter last month, Consumer Watchdog said that Google was lying to consumers and called on the FTC to act.

California-based Google critic Consumer Watchdog called Google’s sweeping changes a “spy policy” rather than a privacy policy, an allusion to the fact that the move will help Google funnel data on users in one larger silo for targeted ads.