Microsoft is pushing its alternative services

Microsoft is taking a chance to poke Google in the eye during all the concern and hubbub around Google changes to its privacy policies. On the Official Microsoft Blog, Microsoft even offers links to some stories on other websites that talk about concerns and complaints users of Google have with the privacy policy changes. It's clear that Microsoft is set to capitalize on Google's woes as much as possible.

The author of the post on the Microsoft blog is Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President for Corporate Communications at Microsoft. Shaw writes that is clear from the coverage that consumers are looking for alternatives to Google services because they're concerned about their information. Shaw writes that Google's changes make it harder, not easier for users of its services to control their information.

Then Shaw takes the opportunity to promote Microsoft's alternative services that directly compare with Google services. The services Microsoft is talking up include Hotmail, Bing, Office 365, and Internet Explorer. Microsoft is also set to run ads touting its alternative to Google's services in major newspapers this week all around the country as a way to remind users that it also offers services similar to what Google has.

Google is taking a lot of heat over the changes in its privacy policies, and has even received a letter from Congress asking for clarification on the pending changes. Google says it's not changing anything, and is simply consolidating the policies for about 60 different services it offers into one document. Google maintains that its goal for the changes is to make it easier for users of various Google services to have their information available to them no matter what service they're using.

Some fear this is a way for Google to access more of their personal information for marketing purposes. However, Google is very clear that it is keeping all your private information private.

Source: Microsoft


[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]



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After Google announced Search plus Your World yesterday, Twitter responded negatively

Google announced a new addition to its Search service this week called "Search plus Your World," which brings a social aspect to the table. But social giant Twitter has made it clear that Google's latest release is stepping on its toes, and could likely take away some of Twitter's spotlight.

Search plus Your World is Google's most recent effort to apply a social touch to its search engine. The new tool will allow users to not only search the Web for public webpages as they normally would via Google, but also search their own pages and content as well as family and friends' pages and content. The whole idea mainly centers around Google+ pages and Picasa images on the Web, probably in an effort to attract more Google+ members.

Google is achieving this through three new features, including Personal Results, which allows the user to find information like Google+ photos and posts that include them or were created by them; Profiles in Search, which allows a user to find people they know, and People and Pages, which helps users find people they may not know yet, but may want to based on similar interests.

Google gives users the option to add Search plus Your World to normal search just by clicking a toggle button under the Search bar. Just click the icon of a person to see personal results. If you'd prefer to see public pages like usual only, there's an icon of a globe right next to the social icon that will remove results pertaining to you or people you know personally.


Google also assures that the privacy settings are easy to use for those who do not want certain things to show up in Search. Posts and photos can be marked with settings that will only be visible to the user, limited people or the public.

Google is rolling out the new feature over the next few days, and some are not very happy about it (cough TWITTER cough).

After Google announced Search plus Your World yesterday, Twitter responded negatively with both a formal statement and a Twitter post from company general counsel and former Google employee Alex Macgillivray.

"Bad day for the Internet," tweeted Macgillivray. "Having been there, I can imagine the dissention @google to search being warped this way."

Twitter later released the following statement in regards to Google's Search plus Your World:

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we've seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.

We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

Google responded to Twitter via a Google+ post, saying it wasn't sure what Twitter's beef was considering Twitter chose not to renew it's two-year-old deal with Google to display real-time tweets last July, which likely decreased Twitter visibility.

However, many are now wondering if Google will attract attention from the Justice Department because of this new move.

Sources: The Official Google Blog, CNET


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Facebook has since disabled the report tool and is fixing the flaw

Saying Facebook has privacy issues is like saying the Earth revolves around the sun; it's just understood at this point. Facebook further solidified that viewpoint today when a flaw allowed users to peek at the private photos of others.

Facebook users were able to access the private photos of others today via a Facebook flaw associated with the "Report Abuse" tool. The flaw was identified by a body building forum earlier in the day.

Using the "Report Abuse" tool, Facebook users were able to flag profile photos as inappropriate. When checking the "nudity or pornography" option as the reason for the photo being inappropriate, Facebook offered the user a "take action by selecting additional photos to include with your report" option. This allowed Facebook users to see a number of extra photos, private or not.

The flaw can be abused by anyone, according to ZDNet, and users who were victims of privacy invasion have no way of knowing what happened. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a victim of privacy invasion today, as a few of his private photos (which can be seen to the right of this article) were posted online.

Later today, Facebook addressed the issue in a statement and disabled the tool until the flaw is fixed.

Facebook's statement is as follows:

Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously.

The bug, was a result of one of our most recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time. Not all content was accessible, rather a small number of one’s photos. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed.

What is especially interesting about this new security flaw is that Facebook just settled its major privacy case with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, where Facebook agreed to obtain user consent when changes are made to privacy settings as well as 20 years of independent audits.

Sources: ZDNet, imgur


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