While reading Yahoo’s Compliance Guide for Law Enforcement, Mahesh Murthy noticed that Yahoo will sell your privacy for $10 to governments who need info about you. He tweeted about it and within minutes people were talking about it online. Clearly, privacy concerns are top-center in the minds of online users and this issue is discussed here below.

Link to the original story, by Ranjana Kaushal.

Any guesses on the worth of a basic user information uploaded on online sites? Going by a recent document put up by Internet major Yahoo, the purchase cost of a basic user information is a mere $ 20 or under Rs 1,000.

According to the document titled ‘Compliance guide for law enforcement’ Yahoo states that it provides subscriber information, including chat details to the respective state governments for a price. And this price starts from Rs 500 for identity proof records that individuals share while using emails, chats or social networking on its platforms. The price for doling out information rises, depending on the nature of requirement.

Take, for example, the basic group information (including information about moderators). This is priced at approximately $ 20 or under Rs 1,000 for a group with a single moderator. The contents of the subscriber accounts, including emails can vary between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000 per user. The price of the contents of the groups ranges between Rs 2,000 and Rs 4,000 per group.

Clearly, this means that any information that users put up in the virtual world is up for sale and Internet companies are more than willing to part with it for a price to government agencies.

"Most of the Internet companies share user information with law agencies. But in the case of Yahoo I find it particularly interesting wherein the company has put up a price list for the service. I would say it appears like a spying rate card.

It is difficult to say what kind of revenue this business might generate," says Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm, a pay for performance digital company.

While Internet firms such as Google, Rediff and others are known for providing data to government agencies for curbing terrorism, what comes as a surprise is the blatant tariff card put up by Yahoo.

Points out an industry observer, "There is little to debate on doling out information because recently terrorists have been actively using the online world to plan attacks using different IDs across the globe. Internet companies passing this information to governments help in track antisocial elements. The only thing is that pricing of such activities should be kept discreet." In the compliance guide, Yahoo mentions it has worked with law enforcement agencies and the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), US to develop practices for reporting instances of apparent child pornography (CP) as required by US laws.

Upon becoming aware of CP, Yahoo’s customer care department disables public access to the content and escalates it to the company’s legal department, which reviews the content and determines whether it is required to be reported to NCMEC. "Cases where Yahoo has helped democratic governments to nail criminals are commendable. But in the Presidential form of government the state uses this power to extract information about citizens who might indulge in (even) honest protests. Looking at these aspects I feel companies should refrain from putting a price tag on consumer-related information," says Murthy.

We created a questionnaire to find out which local search service is the most popular in India. We wanted to find out which local search engines, according to the users, presented better accuracy and were most widely used by everyone.

We posted the survey on Twitter and were glad to receive 231 responses. We believe the responses are a fair indicator of the questions asked in the survey.

As promised, here are the unedited results of the survey, Local Search in India: on Just Dial, Google and more! Click on the images for a larger graph:

This data from 231 entries cannot be extrapolated. For more details, feel free to write to us at info@pinstorm.com.

When Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook announced that they are getting rid of all regional networks due to better privacy controls, everyone wondered what the fallout will be. Business Standard caught up with Kiruba, Moksh Juneja and our very own Mahesh to set the record straight. Here is what they found!

Link to the original story, by Leslie D’Monte.

Almost 50 per cent of all the 350 million-odd active users on the social networking site are members of regional networks.

The world’s largest social networking site, Facebook, has decided to rid itself of regional networks like India and China in a bid to tighten its privacy policy. Following this move, thousands of Facebook users from India, who had opted for the “India” network when joining the social networking site, will have to revise their settings.

Every Indian who joins Facebook has an option to choose the “India” network. India has nearly 12 million Facebook users, and the number is growing steadily. And there are numerous “India networks” — the largest have around 13,198 members. Compared to this, Orkut (owned by Google) has around 16 million users, but the numbers are declining.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks Facebook will ask its users to review and update their privacy settings. Users will see a message that will explain the changes and take them to a page where they can update their settings. When they’re finished, it will show a confirmation page so that one can make sure one has chosen the right settings. As always, once the task is done, users will still be able to change the settings whenever they want.

Facebook has its reasons. Almost 50 per cent of all the 350 million-odd Facebook’s active users are members of regional networks, “so this is an important issue for us”, said Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg in an open letter to users.

As Facebook has grown, regional networks like India and China have millions of members and “we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have more control of their information,” said Zuckerberg.

“The positive side is that users will be better able to protect their privacy. On the negative side, users like me who have hundreds of contacts who have added me as friends, would now have to sift through those lists and decide who should see what. This is going to be very painful. It will need a software to manage these third-party contacts,” rues Mahesh Murthy, founder and cheif executive officer of search engine marketing firm, Pinstorm.

“This was waiting to happen. The regional networks were not adding any value as such,” says Kiruba Shankar, co-founder of F5ive Technologies and founder CEO of Business Blogging. He adds, though, that Facebook probably did this since the regional networks were a drain on resources without adding any value in terms of advertising. “When it comes to advertising, Facebook can’t hold a candle to Google,” he says.

Another Facebook user, Moksh Juneja, concurs: “It won’t make any difference to the users except the fact that the India networks held an emotional appeal. It gave, perhaps, a sense of belonging so some users may protest.”

Murthy, on his part, believes that the move also “throws up some very important and sensitive questions”. For instance, what happens to large networks? “Is this a precursor to charging for large networks?” asks Murthy. Instances of that are the “Starbucks” network which has over 4.5 fans and the “Coca-Cola” network with nearly 3.6 million fans. “Will Facebook start charging for networks of this size?”

Murthy adds it will also be difficult to rally people around causes that matter — for instance, the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. “I recall that with the help of Facebook and Twitter, we managed to mobilise nearly 220,000 people from all around the city to protest against the attacks, and pressurise the government to take action,” he says.

Incidentally, the first version of Facebook was launched five years ago. Its current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense for a student to share content with their fellow students. Over time, networks were added for companies and regions as well. Today, Facebook has networks for entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members.

Hence, Facebook will now “remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone. We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings”, said Zuckerberg, noting that Facebook “began discussing this plan back in July 2008”.

Experts like Murthy counter that Facebook has used regional networks to grow its presence. “Why should Facebook care now? It has enough users in India. The social networking site — which is now the fourth largest country in terms of population, albeit online, after China, India and the US — is acting like a Big Brother. While protecting privacy is indeed a welcome idea, it should not end up making it harder for people to connect,” concludes Murthy.