Tag: privacy

Japanese Government Reassures Free WiFi Providers Not Tap Users Messages

Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications(MIC) on April 4 issued two administrative directions around the constitutionally guaranteed secrecy of communication (=Tsuushin no Himitsu, in Japanese) against Connect Free and NTT Broadband Platform. Both companies tried to offer free WiFi services at shops last December but got in troubles by suspicious behaviors when users connect… Continue reading Japanese Government Reassures Free WiFi Providers Not Tap Users Messages

Experiment: Can You Identify Twitter Users In Tokyo?

A Japanese column media Omocoro [J] ran an interesting test in Shibuya, one of the most crowded area in Tokyo. A writer Sebuyama tries to find a random person whose tweets show he/she is in Shibuya. All 3 target were picked up from search by “Shibuya nau(=now in Shibuya)” on Twitter, which sometimes could be… Continue reading Experiment: Can You Identify Twitter Users In Tokyo?

Privacy: How To Get Postal Address From Amazon Wish List

Amazon’s wish list is a list of products that you can publish on Amazon and ask people to purchase and send, a kind of donation feature. You are expected to be anonymous and still receive gifts, for example blog readers. On January 18, a Twitter user @mopetsune explained how you can extract anyone’s real address… Continue reading Privacy: How To Get Postal Address From Amazon Wish List

Young American Serial Entrepreneur Faces Harsh Criticism Over Free-By-Ads WiFi Service Privacy Issue

Kristopher Tate is an American-born serial entrepreneur who had appeared many times on TechCrunch by his photo-sharing start up Zooomr founded at his age of 17. TechCrunch’s database had not tracked him later but he migrated to Tokyo with Zooomr with seeing more possibility in Japan and Japanese web in 2007, has been actively developing… Continue reading Young American Serial Entrepreneur Faces Harsh Criticism Over Free-By-Ads WiFi Service Privacy Issue

Milog Gives Up User-Tracking Android Ads Library

Milog announced [J] that it had taken down its infamous AppLog SDK for Android, which were embedded into several Android applications and send users’ application usage information even before getting permission. Last week I wrote about Milog’s service/library and the issues they caused on The Japan Times. Popular Android web browser Dolphin Browser collecting users… Continue reading Milog Gives Up User-Tracking Android Ads Library

Twitter Finds Recommended Users From The Same IP Address? Rumor Frightening Japanese Users

Some Japanese Twitter users started complaining on May 14th that Twitter recommends their family, colleagues and their own secret sub-accounts to them on “Who to follow” field on the sidebar. (examples picked up on a Togetter page [J]) They wrote that they hide their Twitter existence from their family and colleagues, or never told anyone… Continue reading Twitter Finds Recommended Users From The Same IP Address? Rumor Frightening Japanese Users

Mixi Gives Up New “Search Friends By E-mail Address” Feature After Harsh Rejection

On November 30th, Mixi, Japanese counterpart of Facebook, one of the three biggest Japanese social network service, introduced a new feature [J, requires Mixi log-in], which allows you to search your friend on Mixi from his/her e-mail address, which makes Mixi step into real life networks side. Before the change, you could invite your friend… Continue reading Mixi Gives Up New “Search Friends By E-mail Address” Feature After Harsh Rejection

Japanese Government Allows ISPs to Target Ads by Browsing History

A Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (総務省) working group recently published an opinion stating that certain network monitoring technologies (Deep Packet Inspection) can be used by Internet Service Providers to serve targeted advertising to users, but only after the user has been clearly notified of these practices. This news made the top page of Sunday’s… Continue reading Japanese Government Allows ISPs to Target Ads by Browsing History

Japanese Government Proposes Pandemic Tracking System By Cellphone GPS

Japan’s Ministry of Affairs and Communications (MIC) calls several projects starting in 2009 as part of the ICT Standard Development Project. Among the three big categories [J], one of the 11 themes in the “Cyber District” operation is “Cellular phone Lifelog”, which targets to draw up the rules for time-space data utilization. In particular, as… Continue reading Japanese Government Proposes Pandemic Tracking System By Cellphone GPS