The pre-blocked Google Plus Circle

19.07.2011/10.10

I might be Google-sceptic, but I’m not so daft as to risk clients and the Medinge Group, both groups having various things in my Google account, opened either in the days when Google was not being evil (many, many years ago now) or before Google acquired that company. So, I made a public proﬁle, to […]

The Murdoch apology does not let us off the hook

16.07.2011/02.34

Above is Rupert Murdoch’s apology for the actions of the News of the World, to run in the UK in the wake of the resignations of Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton. They’re great words, and they’re straight out of the PR 101 playbook. Some might say they’re a triﬂe too late, as was […]

Google organized the web, Facebook our social networks; what does Plus do?

01.07.2011/13.46

I see the Google press machine has been switched on as the company pursues the Facebook social-networking market with Plus. Google, I’m betting, must hope that history will repeat itself. It wasn’t the ﬁrst search engine, it simply did it better. Plus, in Googleland, it is a better proverbial mousetrap than Facebook. I might […]

Privacy Commissioner agrees with my 2009 thoughts: New Zealand Post breached your privacy

20.06.2011/00.52

A Fairfax Press headline today: ‘“Large-scale breach” of privacy rules by NZ Post’. The Privacy Commissioner has found New Zealand Post breached privacy rules in a promotion in July 2009, which I thought would have been a juicy story back then. The reporters write: The 2009 survey asked participants 57 multi-choice questions, ranging from […]

Google Ads Preferences Manager issue conﬁrmed by NAI

05.05.2011/00.38

I’ve now had conﬁrmation from the Network Advertising Initiative that Google has, indeed, been dodgy about its Ads Preferences Manager. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We were able to reproduce the issues you saw and have been working with Google for the last week to address them. I am happy […]

Someone’s doing something right inside Google

01.04.2011/23.45

The troubles with Google that I’ve faced—privacy breaches, Ads Preferences Manager not honouring its claims, ﬁghting for six months on behalf of a friend over a deleted Blogger blog, Chrome being buggy (but not nearly as badly as IE9), phantom entries in my Google dashboard, unanswered messages—would suggest, to anyone studying business or a graduate […]

Three out of three: Google’s Ads Preferences Manager does not work

19.03.2011/23.19

I know you’re sick of reading three of these blog entries on three consecutive days but here’s what my Google Ads Preferences Manager has shown me today. I’m sick of writing about it, but Google’s being so damned predictable. First, the cookie is back, though it hasn’t picked up preferences yet this morning: […]

Google advertising doesn’t understand that opting out means opting out

/01.25

Yesterday, I wrote about Google’s Ads Preferences Manager. I mentioned that I had opted out before, but had found myself having to repeat the exercise. I did, however, stop short at levelling blame at Google for another privacy gaffe, despite its behaviour with Web History, Buzz, Reader, Notes, etc., just in case I had ﬁddled […]

Check that your Google ad opt-out has been honoured

18.03.2011/10.35

I have opted out of Google’s Doubleclick (and others’) advertising cookies many times. In theory, you only need to do it once, but I have been to Google’s opt-out page many times to ﬁnd that the company has set another new cookie on my system. I ﬁddle around with my cookies a lot, so […]

Amazon begins charging dormant-account fee

25.11.2010/12.25

Here’s a new clause in the Amazon Associates’ contract that I never spotted before, which is available publicly for viewing. European countries have a similar one, with differences in the currency. If you have not earned any advertising fees in the 3 years prior to any given calendar month, then on the first day of […]