One million Samsung Galaxy users had an opportunity earlier this month to get a free copy of "Magna Carta," Jay-Z's new album, before its official release date. But to do so, they had to download an app that sought permission to collect a host of information -- far more than was apparently needed. Samsung told users before they installed the app that it would be able to delete USB storage, prevent the phone from sleeping, access location information, phone numbers dialed, and a trove of other data. Fair trade? The Electronic Privacy Information Center doesn't think so. That organization is …

The Internet standards group World Wide Web Consortium has unequivocally rejected the ad industry's proposal that it should be able to continue using behavioral targeting techniques to serve ads to people with do-not-track turned on. In a decision issued last night, the co-chairs made clear that the ad industry's proposal was inconsistent with the W3C's tracking protection group's mission, which is centered on coming up with a way to use a do-not-track header to block or allow ad targeting and data collection.

A group of ad networks today officially signed on to a voluntary plan aimed at curbing online piracy. Google, AOL, Yahoo and other Web companies that operate ad networks pledged to follow an anti-piracy policy that involves cutting off sites -- namely, those that are "principally dedicated to selling counterfeit goods or engaging in copyright piracy."

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's general counsel Mike Zaneis caused a stir last week when he said that around one in five Web users are sending do-not-track signals as they surf the Web. Zaneis told the Internet standards group World Wide Web Consortium that the proportion of users with do-not-track signals had grown so high that the ad industry couldn't stop serving targeted ads to those people.

Two years ago, the major Web browsers started offering users the option of turning on do-not-track headers, which tell companies that the users don't want to be "tracked" online. But even though those signals are now in use, they are widely ignored -- largely because Web companies have been waiting for guidance from the Internet standards group World Wide Web Consortium, which is trying to figure out how sites should respond to those signals. Tomorrow, the organization's tracking protection group is slated to vote on some possibilities, which will then to go the group's chairs for further consideration.

Until 2010, Amazon sold bestselling books in electronic form for just $9.99. But that spring, the price of ebooks jumped considerably. Apple is to blame. At least, that's what U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote in New York believes. In a 160-page opinion issued today, Cote wrote that Apple "changed the face of the e-book industry" by illegally orchestrating a price-fixing conspiracy with five major publishers.

Several years ago, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley shook up the online ad industry by reporting that many companies used "flash" cookies to track people who deleted their "regular" cookies. The findings spurred companies to change their practices, and also sparked public discussion -- and appeared to result in at least one Federal Trade Commission case. But the researchers could just as easily have found themselves on the wrong side of computer fraud charges. That's according to computer scientist (and law school graduate) Jonathan Mayer and Stanford Law School's Jennifer Granick, who co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief seeking to …

Hacker Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, convicted of computer fraud for exposing poor security practices at AT&T, is getting some high-profile support for his appeal.

European regulators really aren't happy with Google's decision last year to change its privacy policy. Today, the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office told the search company that its 2012 privacy policy doesn't give consumers enough information about how Google will draw on data about users.

Three years ago, hacker Andrew Auernheimer embarrassed AT&T by exposing its questionable security practices.Specifically, Auernheimer publicly called out AT&T for posting the email addresses of iPad users online, without protecting the information via passwords.