Android Challenges iPhone, Users Win

 

 

As I sat in the audience at Google's I|O conference Thursday morning, I watched Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra and others unveil Android 2.2 "Froyo," an ambitious upgrade to the company's mobile OS. Gundotra began the keynote by framing Android as a moral crusade against "a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice."

In case anyone couldn't figure out who the man, company, device, and carrier were, he showed a slide that alluded to Apple's most famous commercial. Then, for the rest of the Android 2.2 announcement, Gundotra and others punctuated demos of impressive stuff -- such as dramatic speed boosts and Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities -- with asides about the iPhone and iPad that appeared to be intended to elicit snickers from the audience. Which they did.

Apple's WWDC conference kicks off in a little over two weeks. Like I|O, it'll be held at San Francisco's Moscone West. Apple hasn't even formally announced that the event will include a keynote, but I'm assuming there's a good chance I'll sit in the same auditorium I was in yesterday, listening to Steve Jobs talk about the next iPhone. Even if he never mentions Google by name, he'll surely aim some little jibes in the direction of Apple's competitors, if only during the inevitable prefatory bit where he updates attendees on iPhone's competitive position. Even if he doesn't, we already know that he thinks Android is out to "kill" the iPhone.

Google and Apple both seem to take the competition between Android and iPhone as an existential, company-defining battle. They're both pouring awesome resources into their work. They're building really good products which, for all their similarities, express strikingly different visions of what a mobile platform should be. And the market appears to be more than big enough for both companies to do well.

Mots clés Technorati : iPhone,Google,Apple,Android

It's great -- some of the fiercest, healthiest, most consumer-benefiting rivalry I can think of in the entire history of personal technology. (That history has surprisingly few examples of sustained competition between two giants, in part because one of the giants was so often Microsoft, who -- back in the day -- played hardball more ruthlessly than anyone, and usually against companies who made some truly boneheaded strategic missteps.)

On one side, you've got Apple, which has built the world's most usable, influential mobile operating system,. It's got the biggest and best selection of applications, even though Apple's developer agreement and App Store approval process seriously constrain what developers can do. The company says that keeping Flash off the iPhone is a good deed, and is willing to deny users basic features such as multitasking until it nails them. And it sells only one model of phone (unless you want the 2008 version), on one not-exactly-beloved U.S. carrier.

On the other side, there's Android -- a technically solid operating system which appears to have been designed by folks with minimal interest in issues of usability. (At yesterday's keynote, I kept waiting...and waiting...for news of improvements to the Android interface.) It's got a smaller collection of apps, but one that's growing quickly in both quantity and quality, with no micromanaging restrictions on developers. Google is embracing Flash, and adding features to Android that still feel a tad futuristic. (Android's about to get a built-in voice-recognition/text-to-speech autotranslation feature; the chances that Apple is working on anything similar are pretty much zero.) And there are a bevy of Android phones -- ones with varying sizes, specs, and features, on every carrier.

I'm not saying that nobody's allowed to grumble about these two companies and platforms -- hey, I own an iPhone 3GS and a Droid and have aired my share of gripes about both of them. But with both the iPhone and Android in such robust health, everyone who buys a phone gets to decide which vision to buy into. (Or, of course, to buy a BlackBerry, a WebOS phone, a Symbian one, or something else.) And by voting with their dollars, it's consumers -- not Google or Apple -- that will determine what the future of mobile computing and communications looks like.

Here's the future I'm hoping for: one in which both companies duke it out in the marketplace (not the courtroom) for years to come. So bring it on -- snarky comments, self-serving melodrama, and all.

 

10 conseils pour éviter de petits ennuis avec sa vie privée sur Facebook…

 

Voici 10 petits conseils / astuces qui vous permettront de ne pas devenir n’importe qui en faisant n’importe quoi avec votre compte Facebook !

1. Créez des groupes et classez-y vos amis ! Cela vous permettra de mieux cibler vos messages et de ne pas envoyer vos dernières photos « mec bourré au nouvel an » à vos collègues ou Tati jeannette…
2. Désindexez vous ! Sans pour autant supprimer votre compte, il est possible de vous retirer du moteur de recherche. Allez dans vos Paramètres -> confidentialité -> Recherche et sélectionnez « Seulement les amis » par exemple. Ainsi, on ne vous trouvera plus sur Facebook, mis à part vos amis.
3. Toujours sur cette même pas, décochez la case « Créer un profil public« . Cela vous désindexera de Google. En effet, si cette case est cochée, n’importe qui, tapant votre nom dans Google, peut voir votre page Facebook dans les résultats
4. Autre truc assez gênant sur Facebook, c’est la possibilité pour vos amis d’uploader des photos de vous et de vous tagger à tout va… Evidement pendant ce temps, vous ne controlez plus votre image. Il est bien sûr possible de censurer le tag à postériori sur une photo mais le mieux, c’est d’interdire à tout le monde de trouver des photos ou vidéos taggées avec votre nom. Pour cela, allez dans Paramètres -> confidentialité -> Profil et sélectionnez dans la liste « Photos sur lesquelles vous êtes marqué(e) » -> « Personnaliser » afin de préciser que la seule personne autorisée à voir les photos taggées avec votre nom est vous seul !
5. Juste en dessous, il y a aussi une option qui s’appelle « Modifier les paramètres de confidentialité des albums photos« . Cela vous permettra de décider qui a le droit de voir vos photos ! Super pratique pour éviter que votre big boss ne voit les photos de votre bain de minuit, à poil, dans la fontaine du centre ville
6. Un truc que les gens adorent sur Facebook, c’est le petit coeur qui indique si oui ou non, vous avez divorcé, trouvé une nana ou un mec ou si vous êtes redevenu le bon célibataire acharné au bout de 3 jours de bonheur fougueux avec une strip-teaseuse de Tourcoing… Bref, la loose… Du coup, en allant dans Paramètres -> confidentialité -> Actualité et mur vous pouvez décocher la case « Supprimez la situation amoureuse« … ça vous évitera quelques problèmes je pense.
7. Evitez les applications douteuses comme celle-ci qui permettent de dire si vous voulez coucher avec l’un de vos amis, ou qui étale publiquement ce que vous pensez de untel ou untel…Etc… Bref, tout ce qui est ensuite rendu public aux autres et qui concerne la vie privée, évitez !!
8. Attention à vos coordonnées ! En effet, vous n’avez peut être pas envie de laisser votre n° de téléphone à tout le monde… Dans ce cas, allez dans Paramètres -> confidentialité -> Profil -> onglet coordonnées et faites vos réglages pour masquer par exemple votre n° de téléphone ou votre email à certains de vos contacts, groupes ou réseaux…
9. Toujours dans Paramètres -> confidentialité -> Profil n’oubliez pas de décocher la case « Mes amis peuvent écrire sur mon mur » afin d’éviter que vos pôtes boulets vous affichent publiquement ou caftent à la terre entière votre relation avec cette striptease de Tourcoing (oui encore elle, vous avez replongé, c’est mal !)
10. Et pour finir, parce que pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés, il est possible, toujours dans cette même page de profil, de limiter la visibilité de vos amis. En effet, cela peut être dérangeant pour vous que votre petite copine qui est dans vos amis, puisse voir l’arrivée de Raymonde, stripteaseuse de son état, dans vos contacts ! Bref, très pratique lorsque les amis de vos amis ne sont pas forcement vos amis… et vice versa (enfin, plus vice que versa d’ailleurs)

A bon entendeur !

par kourben

Mots clés Technorati : 10 conseils,vie privée,Facebook

Et si tout le monde fermait son compte Facebook?

         Après avoir attiré des millions d'internautes, le réseau social fait peur à certains...

Compte facebook fermé “Montage Le Post”

Si Facebook était un pays, il serait le 3ème plus peuplé du monde... devant les Etats-Unis.
Le réseau social créé en 2004 par Mark Zuckerberg compte plus de 400 millions d'inscrits. En France, il réunit pas moins de 15 millions de personnes.
Mais il fait face à des critiques de plus en plus nombreuses.
1. Quid de la vie privée ?
Depuis les derniers changements mis en place par Facebook, la protection de la vie privée est au coeur de la polémique. "Dorénavant, la plupart des informations personnelles sont publiques par défaut", explique France24 qui consacre un article au sujet.
Facebook est devenue une "pieuvre" qui connaît tout sur tout le monde et offre la possibilité à n'importe qui de connaître les infos contenues dans les profils, se plaignent des internautes.
Un schéma bien résumé dans cette infographie du NewYorkTimes qui liste tous les critères de confidentialité à activer (plus de 170 paramètres dans 50 catégories) pour protéger sa vie privée.
Mais attention... "en publiant sur Facebook, chacun perd le contrôle de ce qu'il publie", dénonce Hugo Roy sur son blog. Ce spécialiste d'Internet et des logiciels libres publie un billet intitulé "Pourquoi je n'utiliserai plus Facebook" dans lequel il rappelle que "chaque fois que vous publiez, vous remettez aux mains de Facebook vos données. En effet, vous ne savez pas, dans un an, ou même dans trois mois, comment Facebook va décider de changer ses paramètres."
2. Difficile de se désinscrire !
Inquiets, certains utilisateurs cherchent comment se désinscrire.
Impossible de les chiffrer exactement. Mais les recherches concernant le sujet ont apparemment bondi ces derniers mois sur Google, en ce qui concerne les requêtes en anglais ("delete facebook profile") ainsi que les recherches en français ("supprimer compte facebook")

Le moteur de recherche suggère d'ailleurs cette recherche aux internautes :

Supprimer un compte Facebook -  capture d'écran Google

Et là, ce n'est pas simple, si l'on en croit ce papier de L'Express.fr. Le site propose de suspendre votre compte... mais pas de le supprimer. Il faut donc un peu de rechercher et quelques clics pour tomber sur LE bouton qui fera oublier votre vie à Facebook.
3. De la concurrence pour Facebook ?
Convaincus que les réseaux sociaux sont utiles et doivent être développées, des étudiants de l'université Courant Institute de New York veulent en lancer un tout nouveau. "Respectueux, libre et décentralisé", selon la présentation qu'en fait Pc Inpact, Diaspora pourrait devenir un sérieux concurrent de Facebook. Il promet en tout cas "un contrôle total" des internautes sur leurs données personnelles.
Encore faut-il que les fondateurs réunissent les sommes nécessaires à son déploiement... Un appel aux dons a été lancé : il a déjà permis de recueillir 100.000 euros en quelques jours, selon Le Monde.fr.
4. Une autre solution existe...
En attendant la mise en place d'une hypothétique nouvelle politique de protection des données personnelles par Facebook ou l'ouverture de son concurrent Diaspora, il est toujours possible de protéger sa vie privée.
Il suffit d'observer quelques règles de bonne pratique des réseaux sociaux.
Ce que résume Stéphane dans les commentaires du blog d'Hugo Roy :  "Apprendre à utiliser Facebook d’une façon intelligente est bien plus productif que boycotter le réseau comme des autruches qui se mettent la tète dans le sable". Et le blogueur de proposer sa propre méthode : choix restreint de "friends", bons paramétrages de vie privée...
Le blogueur Korben avait également listé les "10 conseils pour ne pas devenir n'importe qui en faisant n'importe quoi sur Facebook".
Mais ces 2 méthodes oublient le conseil essentiel. Facebook ne pourra pas ni exploiter ni dévoiler les informations que vous ne lui livrez pas. 30 secondes de réflexion avant de lui confier les photos de votre dernière soirée alcoolisée ou les secrets de vos performances sexuelles, ce n'est pas du temps perdu.

 

Mots clés Technorati : Close facebook account

Google world dominance? Google says Android smartphones gain momentum

Google says 100,000 Android phones are being activated every day and it's app library now boasts over 50,000 titles.

Attendees await the beginning of the unveiling of Google's Nexus One Android smartphone, the first mobile phone the internet company will sell directly to consumers, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

 

Google said more than 100,000 smartphones running on its Android mobile operating system are now activated daily and its library of applications has grown to 50,000, underscoring rapid adoption of the devices.

 

The Internet search and advertising leader said on Thursday that searches on its mobile Internet search engine have quintupled in just the past two years.

At its annual developer's conference, Google executives outlined how the Android -- an operating system introduced last year in competition with Apple Corp's and Palm PALM.O> -- is gaining traction in the intensely competitive market.

Later on Thursday, Google, Intel Corp and Sony Corp announced a joint effort to develop Web-connected televisions for households.

The tie-up may extend Google and Intel's reach beyond the personal computer and into the roughly $70 billion television broadcasting ad market. Sony, whose erstwhile dominance in consumer electronics has been eroded by the likes of Samsung, could beat rivals to a potentially new generation of devices.

The multi-pronged effort will mark the latest attempt to bring the Internet to the living room, a vision that has attracted and challenged virtually every major player in the technology and consumer electronics industry for years, from Apple to Microsoft.

Google: A new consumer electronics power broker

 

Six tech industry CEOs don't often appear in the same place at the same time. Google, the dominant search company of our time, has clout in consumer electronics as well.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Could the long-awaited marriage of the television and the Web be blessed by a search company?

Google is at least going to make an attempt, unveiling the signature announcement of Google I/O 2010, Google TV, before a crowd of developers at the Moscone Center Thursday. While Google will need developer support to make Google TV happen, the message wasn't entirely aimed at them.

Instead, in convening a panel of some of the most important CEOs in the world of consumer electronics--Sony, Best Buy, and Intel, among others--Google declared its intention to shake up the world of consumer devices the same way it has disrupted countless other industries in its 12 years as an organization. Google is attempting to do what the PC and consumer electronics industries have tried--and failed--to do for years: bring the nearly unlimited content of the Web to the large-screen TV while preserving the tried-and-true television experience that has enraptured three generations of Americans.

If this effort succeeds, there will be a new power broker in consumer electronics. And Google will have found a way to move past its identity as The Search Company in order to focus on a future based around Web-connected consumer-oriented software.

It's far from a slam dunk: powerful entrenched industries tend to not like it when Google comes knocking on their door. And tech conference demos alone--especially buggy ones--do not sell a product. But after the failed attempts of the Wintel duopoly (remember that?) to accomplish this goal in the last decade, Google is pushing ahead with its own take on the problem at a time when people might be finally ready to listen.

So what is Google TV? Essentially, it's an Android-based operating system for televisions and set-top boxes that fulfills one of the key goals that eluded the PC industry years ago: seamless integration of Web content and cable or satellite content.

Intel and Microsoft wanted to put PCs in living rooms, attempting to dress them up to look like cable boxes or DVRs. However, people didn't want to buy another full-fledged PC simply to sit in their entertainment centers and drown out the movie with the sound of the cooling fan. And the Windows brand did not resonate with the consumer electronics set, who didn't want long boot times or PC weirdness when trying to fire up their favorite show.

Apple waded tentatively into these waters with Apple TV, providing a smaller and less obtrusive box for the living room but walling off the content experience to the iTunes Store and putting few resources behind the project. More recently, a host of other devices like Boxee, Roku, and Slingplayer have tried to deliver Internet content to the television, but they force the user to choose between "Internet mode" and "television mode," and it's amazing how reticent people are to hit a button to switch between input modes.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt (right) and vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra think that if they play their cards right, they could be a player in consumer electronics.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

So could Google TV break this logjam? The promise is certainly there: offering bored TV viewers a better way to search for things that interest them seems like a winner. And layering the Internet over existing television is an idea that has shown some promise, in things like Yahoo's work on TV widgets.

There are more than a few challenges. For one, nobody has any idea what these TVs and set-top boxes will cost relative to existing devices. People might be convinced to pay some sort of premium for this experience, but how much? These are uncharted waters.

And how will Google's search technologies be implemented in this product? Mark Cuban, founder of Broadcast.com and HDNet, and avid NBA playoff spectator (as opposed to participant), nailed it when he said Thursday "the success of Google TV will come down to one thing...PageRank. Can you imagine the white hat and black hat SEO battles that will take place as video content providers try to get to the top of the TV Search Listings on Google TV?...How Google does its PageRank for this product will have a bigger impact on the success of the product in the TV market than anything else it does."

But aside from the questions about Google TV itself, the announcement once again reveals Google's limitless ambition. This is a company that honestly thinks it can provide better technology products and services than anyone else in the world.

People laughed when Google got into mobile operating systems, wondering how a search company could break into a market dominated by old hands like Nokia and RIM as well as new upstarts like Apple (which at least had the benefit of decades of world-class software development). That seems to have worked out well for Google: it's the second largest smartphone operating system supplier in the U.S. at the moment, behind RIM and ahead of Apple.

There are few companies that could have assembled a CEO roster like the one Google put together Thursday. Coordinating the schedules of six major consumer electronics and computer industry CEOs must have taken a huge effort behind the scenes, and they weren't even all in Las Vegas in January for CES. It was quite a list: Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer, Logitech CEO Jerry Quindlen, Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn, and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

Web TV gadgets through the ages (images)

As we alluded to earlier in the week, Google is reaching a point in its evolution where it is bringing the tech industry into its own orbit. Consider this: Intel and Sony played second fiddle to Google Thursday in an announcement that highlighted their own failures to produce such a product.

And however Google's ruling triumvirate might feel about Apple CEO Steve Jobs and all he has accomplished over the years, Google could not have drawn clearer battle lines on Thursday: it wants to be as prominent a consumer electronics software company as Apple, and it is going about that strategy by marshaling industry support, rather than going it alone.

Mots clés Technorati : Google,A new consumer electronics power broker

Google Brings an Open Source Gun to the Video Codec Battle

 

By Richard Adhikari LinuxInsider Part of the ECT News Network  05/20/10 12:01 PM PT

"HTML5 doesn't specify which video and audio codecs to use," according to Thomas Ford at Opera Software."That's why we have a codec war. First there was Theora, then H.264 and now there's WebM." WebM is Google's new open source media format, and it's going head to head with H.264, a standard favored by Google and Microsoft.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) on Thursday announced WebM, a royalty-free media file format for online video. With WebM, Google has thrown the gauntlet to H.264, the codec backed by rivals Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), among others.

Buried within the new format's FAQ was news about another Google project: Android. The next iteration of the mobile operating system, dubbed "Gingerbread," will be released in the fourth quarter of this year.

 

What Is WebM?

WebM is an open, royalty-free media file format designed for the Web. Its files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. Its file structure is based on the Matroska media container.

Vorbis is an open source audio compression technology that's an independent project of the Xiph Foundation. Matroska is a multimedia container format derived from a project called "MCF."

WebM files run on supported Web browsers or media players. Google Chromium will support WebM from Thursday, Opera Labs already supports WebM for several operating systems, and Mozilla Firefox will also support WebM files.

YouTube is supporting WebM, of course, and Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) is also backing the VP8 codec.

Brightcove has announced that one of its clients, The New York Times, will test WebM soon.

Google will release QuickTime and DirectShow plug-ins in the next few weeks that will allow many third-party encoding applications to produce WebM files. On Thursday it released a developer preview for the WebM project.

WebM versus H.264

In unveiling WebM, Google is locking horns with Apple and Microsoft, both of which support the H.264 codec. Cupertino and Redmond have suggested using H.264 and HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash for online videos. Flash, they declared, is creaky and outdated.

However, the battle's not just about the best technology. The real issue is money.

"HTML5 doesn't specify which video and audio codecs to use," Thomas Ford, a spokesperson for browser developer Opera, pointed out."That's why we have a codec war. First there was Theora, then H.264 and now there's WebM."

What's in it for the winner? Dominance of online videos, and that could involve some serious pocket change.

The H.264 codec uses patents that are owned by developer companies, including Microsoft and Apple. Users will have to pay fees to MPEG LA, a private company that administers the licenses for H.264, among others.

Google's WebM Licensing Terms

MPEG LA issues five-year licenses. In February, the company announced that it will not charge users of the H.264 codec royalties for the technology through to December 2015.

Further, there are fears that patent holders may sue users if a dispute arises.

Google may hope to undercut all these problems by making WebM a free and open source project and modifying its licensing terms. Its license is based on BSD and Apache, so licensees can use the VP8 code in both proprietary and open source software with few restrictions.

The main modification Google made to the licensing terms is that its VP8 license grants patent rights, and it terminates if patent litigation is filed alleging the code has been infringed.

"H.264 isn't a very good option because of the rights issues around it," Opera's Ford told LinuxInsider. "We can't pay a large licensing fee, and we needed a free alternative. Fortunately, Google stepped in with a free and open alternative."

Whither WebM?

Despite support for VP8 from several companies, Google may initially find it difficult to take on H.264.

"Unfortunately, VP8 isn't as good as H.264, and Apple is aggressively against it, which could be problematic given the heavy shadow Apple casts on this space," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told LinuxInsider.

However, support from Microsoft may mitigate Google's problems a bit.

"Microsoft has announced that it will build support for VP8 into Internet Explorer 9," Enderle said.

Hansel and Gretel

Rumors that Google's next version of Android will be named "Gingerbread" have been circulating on the blogosphere for months, but up until now Google has refrained from commenting on them officially.

With the unveiling of the WebM codec Thursday, Google announced that Gingerbread is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter and that this version of the operating system will support WebM.

"We expect many other Google products to adopt WebM and VP8 as they prioritize it with their other product requirements," reads Google's WebM FAQ.

VP8 is the video codec Google acquired when it bought On2 Technologies last year. It's used to compress video streams in WebM files.

Google Brings an Open Source Gun to the Video Codec Battle

Mots clés Technorati : Google,Open Source,Video Codec,Battle

Facebook sent some user data to advertisers

May 20, 2010 9:13 PM PDT

Facebook's privacy policy promises, in no uncertain terms, that it doesn't "share your information with advertisers without your consent." Only "non-personally identifiable" data, it says, are shared.

But the social-networking site confirmed late Thursday that it has, at least in some circumstances, sent the user name of a Facebook member to its advertising partners. That can be used to glean a person's name, interests, and list of friends.

A Facebook spokesman told CNET that the apparent privacy leak has been fixed.

News of this data sharing, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday evening, could prove embarrassing to the social-networking site, which is already on the defensive after Washington politicians have been calling for regulatory action on privacy grounds and over a dozen advocacy groups have charged that Facebook engages in "unfair and deceptive" business practices.

Facebook's admission also may conflict with its previous statements. In a blog post last month, a company official wrote: "We don't share your information with advertisers unless you tell us to...Any assertion to the contrary is false. Period."

"We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad," the Facebook spokesman said on Thursday. "We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it. In addition, we have been working on ways to no longer include user IDs in Referer: URLs."

Browsers typically send a Web site, in what's called a Referer: field, the location of the page you last visited. This lets Web operators know where their visitors are coming from, and it's viewed as a perfectly normal and commonplace practice.

The rub: if you're logged into Facebook, the Referer: field can reveal your user name to advertisers.

Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who has a background in Internet advertising, described the problem in a new essay that says: "When a user views her own profile, or a page linked from her own profile, the "?ref=profile" tag is added to the URL--exactly confirming the identity of the profile owner." Facebook could eliminate any privacy concerns by configuring a different type of Referer: set-up, Edelman said.

Other social-networking sites

Other social-networking sites also included the Referer: field, but Facebook appears to be the only one that uses it--inadvertently or intentionally--to signal the identity of who's logged on.

That's not necessarily a privacy leak. If someone clicks on an theoretical advertisement on, say, Twitter.com/jessicaalba or Myspace.com/usher, the Referer: field won't reveal the identity of the reader.

And MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Xanga, and Live Journal downplayed the issue when contacted by the Journal, saying it was standard industry practice.

"While access to a MySpace 'FriendID' does not permit anyone access to information beyond what a user has already made publicly available, MySpace is currently implementing a methodology that will obfuscate the 'FriendID' in any URL that is passed along to advertisers," MySpace said in an e-mail statement.

Facebook acknowledged the issue and said it did not consider the data personally identifiable although it was nonetheless working to change its practice.

"As is common with advertising across the Web, the data that is sent in a referrer URL includes information about the Web page the click came from. This may include the user ID of the page but not the person who clicked on the ad. We don't consider this personally identifiable information and our policy does not allow advertisers to collect user information without the user's consent," a Facebook spokesman said in e-mail.

Edelman, however, says his analysis shows that the user name is frequently leaked. He pointed to a paper outlining precisely this issue written by AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute researchers, which was presented at a conference in Barcelona last August.

It's unclear whether any advertisers have acted on the information they received, but Google's DoubleClick and Yahoo's Right Media told the newspaper they were unaware of the situation and had not used any such data. In Google's case, as a result of DoubleClick's 2002 settlement with state attorneys general, advertisers (and not Google) own the data.

Mots clés Technorati : Facebook