The US Commerce Committee met last Wednesday to discuss bills on privacy issues. Obama's administration and industry representatives, as well as federal regulators working in the sphere of consumer protection and telecommunications issues, also took part in the meeting.

Should the proposed legislation be approved, it will become the first comprehensive privacy law in US history. It will encompass the issues of e-commerce and personal information theft, and will designate the course of action  for companies if their customers’ information should be compromised. The creation of the new legislation is aimed to replace the state laws that are in force now.

One of the bills under consideration, that  prohibits companies to track consumers without giving them prior notification, has caused a lot of disagreements among the participants at the meeting. For example, Senator Pat Toomey, a member of Commerce's Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance subcommittee, claims that nowadays many people voluntarily place their personal information on social networking sites. He affirms that the new privacy rules could “break the Internet,” because “different consumers have different expectations about privacy.”

Senator Toomey calls on his colleagues to thoroughly consider the new rules before accepting them. "I'm sure no one on this committee wants to break the internet, or limit many of the popular online services that consumers can access, in order to avoid fundamentally altering the current online experience in creating these unintended consequences. I just urge that we all proceed with caution," he asserted.

However, other participants at the Wednesday hearing, including  Julie Brill, Federal Trade Commissioner, Senators John Kerry and John Rockefeller, consider that protecting Internet privacy is very important for consumers. They claim that the new legislation will not restrict the activity of online companies but  that it will make  more transparent what kind of information about users they collect, giving the users the opportunity to choose whether to share this information or not.

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The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, made up of a representative from the data protection authority of each  EU Member State, released a document with recommendations about the protection of users’ privacy. The recommendations appeared soon after it had become clear that Google and Apple were storing location information on their customers’ devices.

The Article 29 group is responsible for data protection in each EU member state. Its recommendations can be accepted in some of the EU States or the whole European Union. Moreover, they can influence USA as well. But it is not compulsory to accept and follow their recomendations; the final decision depends on the local governments.

The report says that companies can store their customers’ private data only when they get  the users’ consent to do so. Also, people should be “continuously warned” of when and with what purposes their sensitive information is used. It can help  avoiding  “secret monitoring”. According to the recommendations, users should have an opportunity to remove their data, “without any negative consequences to the use of their device”.

Recently, the South Korean authorities have accused American corporations Google and Apple of comitting privacy breach, and have sent them a questionnaire that includes questions regarding the duration and frecuency of the location information storage and their  permission to collect data from their customers. The questionnaire also asks why the location data was stored in the iPhone and the Android smartphones, and why the actual data was unencrypted.

As we have already reported, Google and Apple are storing location data about their users. The companies can allegedly use this information for marketing purposes.

The answers to the questionnaire have already been received.  To review them, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) set up a committee formed by 16 members. The members are government officials and representatives from academic, engineering and legislative circles.

“We will release the committee’s decision after taking a look at  the related laws, technologies and administrative procedures and reporting it to KCC's Chairman, Choi See-Joong,” said a representative of the KCC.  If the committee decides that the companies are in violation of the country’s privacy protection laws, they will be subject to operation bans or fines.

Recently it has become widely known that iPhone and iPad are tracking you, collecting your current location information. This event made urgent the following questions: why do companies store data about their customers?, do users get anything in exchange for letting them do it? and, what can customers do about it?

First of all, it is worth mentioning that customers don’t give their personal information without indemnity, they receive offers in exchange for information. Companies use gathered data to create an offer that would suit you. This method of tracking was invented by marketers long before the Internet became widespread, the Internet just made it almost perfect. For example, supermarkets give you a discount for one of the products, in exchange they receive information about all the products that you have bought and give you discount coupons that you can use on your next visit to purchase similar things. And the gathering of location data doesn’t differ that much.

If you don’t want to disclose your personal data, it is easy to avoid it by switching off some options in the software on your phone or computer. Many people don’t do it just because they don't care about protecting their privacy or because they like to receive services/offers in exchange for their personal information.

Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, security researchers, announced that the iPhone and the cellular version of the iPad track the user’s current location and save information regarding latitude, longitude and a timestamp to a hidden file, "consolidated.db". This file is stored in the device and is copied to your computer during their synchronization.

The researchers claim that the stored data is available in unencrypted and unprotected form, and worry about the users’ privacy. "Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden. Indeed, anyone who has access to your computer can use an application, created by the researchers, and see on a map your location at a specific time.

However, Apple has a legal right to store the information because terms and conditions for its iTunes program read as follows: "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

Moreover,  there is no information that the collected data is transmitted to Apple, it is just stored in your device and computer. Those who want to be protected in a better way can encrypt the backups to eliminate the possibility of getting location data from their computer.

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