Yet another busy year is winding down and I’d like to share some highlights from Internet Safety Labs. This year, we’ve started changing the discussion from privacy and cybersecurity to Product Safety, which is what people want, deserve, and frankly, expect. People...
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Me2B Alliance, a non-profit standards and advocacy organization focused on safe and respectful technology, today announced that it has been awarded a $100,000 grant by the Internet Society Foundation. The foundation funds initiatives that strengthen the Internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people.
As we move into the time of year when we highlight the celebration and sharing of gratitude, Me2B Alliance would like to express our gratitude to the Internet Society Foundation. The Internet Society Foundation recently granted the Me2B Alliance $100,000 to complete its “U.S. EdTech Industry Benchmark: Data Sharing in Primary & Secondary School Mobile Utility Apps.” The benchmark will build on previous findings about harmful data sharing practices by uncovering how sensitive student information is being treated by school utility apps in grades pre-k through 12 in schools across the nation.
As we’ve been performing independent product audits over the past year and a half, we received some push-back on our passing criteria related to the automatic translation of IP address to geographic location. Vendors felt that automatically calculating the user’s geographical location was, in fact, a benefit. However, in our specification, that behavior will receive a failing score. At an impasse, we decided to conduct some validation testing with Me-s.
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Me2B Alliance, a non-profit standards and advocacy organization focused on safe and respectful technology, today published a Spotlight Report which illustrates the significance of permission, relevance, and control when it comes to location tracking in websites and mobile apps. According to Me2BA’s research, 55% of people say it is “creepy” when websites know their location when they are first opened. In total, 81% of respondents used at least one negative term, including creepy, bad, annoying, scary, and confusing, to describe location tracking in websites. 68% used those same negative terms to describe location tracking in mobile apps.
The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) established the California Privacy Protection Agency (“CPPA”). The CPPA has full administrative power and authority to implement the CCPA and CPRA, which basically means that the CPPA will be in charge of updating regulations and adopting new regulations, while enforcement of these regulations will be done by both the CPPA and the Attorney General’s office.
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 08, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Me2B Alliance, a non-profit standards organization which advocates for safe and respectful technology, today announced the publication of its first official recommendation: “The Attributes for Safe and Respectful Me2B Commitments.” The recommendation outlines baseline best practices to ensure that safe interactions, or commitments, are taking place on websites and mobile applications. Some examples of these commitments include creating an account online, signing up for newsletters, or agreeing to accept cookies while browsing a website.
We’re delighted to announce that the Me2B Alliance has published its first official recommendation: “The Attributes for Safe and Respectful Me2B Commitments”.
This is a significant milestone for the organization that was the fruit of the entire community.
What does this mean?
What an official recommendation (or specification) means is that, similar to virtually all standards developing organizations, the document has gone through multiple approval stages.
Over the past month, the Me2B Alliance product testing team has been investigating something we refer to as “dangling domains” and the risks they pose to people, especially children and families.
A “dangling domain” refers to any URL/domain previously owned by a legitimate organization or business, but which has been either abandoned due to the business shutting down, or due to a mistake where the organization or business forgets to renew their own domain.
The reality of online data flows is nothing like what we expect. Our personal data flows do not start light and increase with time and trust. Instead, a firehose of personal information is released – and shared with a host of unseen third parties – as soon as we open an app or website. Me2BA’s Respectful Tech Specification V.1 is largely focused on testing for these invisible parallel dataverse data flows.
The Me2B Respectful Tech Specification measures technology behavior against 10 attributes that respectful Me2B Commitments should possess. These attributes represent how technology should treat us and our data at every step along the Me2B Relationship Lifecycle.
Over the course of the digital Me2B Lifecycle, individual “Me-s” (Data Subjects) will have the choice of deepening the relationship through a series of Me2B Commitments with the online vendor, “B” (Data Controller). This guide provides examples of common Commitments and Deals, and shows how they map to the stages of a Me2B Lifecycle. It also reflects social norms for being anonymous, recognized, or known at each stage.
When we started drafting the Respectful Tech Specification a couple of years ago, it was immediately obvious that we didn’t have an adequate vocabulary to describe personal experiences in the digital world—never mind measure them.