The Electronic Privacy Information Center and 14 other watchdogs filed a complaint Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook’s new features, including “instant personalization,â€� which shares users’ data with outside companies. “Instant personalization violates user expectations and reveals user information without the user’s consent,â€� EPIC and the other groups argue. Facebook’s instant personalization program shares users’ names, photos, friend lists and other information with Yelp, Microsoft Docs and Pandora when people visit those companies while logged in to Facebook. Even when users opt out of the feature, their information can still be shared if their friends. The …

In January, AT&T quieted critics of its coverage quality by announcing plans to spend $2 billion on improvements throughout the year. Yet, according to a new customer survey conducted by ChangeWave Research, the quality of AT&T’s service has actually worsened. In a poll that asked 4,040 smartphone users in March how many dropped calls they had experienced in the past three months, AT&T came in dead last. Verizon customers reported losing only 1.5% of their calls over the past three months -- the lowest in the smartphone industry and the lowest percentage for a carrier ever recorded by ChangeWave. AT&T …

Newsy just raised $2 million from some unnamed angel investor. The startup, according to Venture Beat, “is trying to do for the mobile video explosion what Ted Turner did with the cable TV explosion thirty years ago: Deliver a new kind of news enabled by the technology.â€� Founded in 2008, Newsy is not in the business of original reporting or automated aggregation. Rather, it prepares two-to-three-minute online videos, which highlight and explain the different coverage angles on a particular news story from different media sources. “The goal isn’t to look for biased reporting, but rather to provide viewers with …

Likely in response to Bing’s more nuanced search experience, Google is making what The New York Times calls “some very noticeable changesâ€� to its search results pages. Expected to be rolled out gradually throughout the week, the search giant is adding a new left-handed navigation panel to most results pages. According to The Times’ Bits blog, this “visual clutterâ€� means users will have easier access to tools to help them more narrowly focus search queries. Now, when users search for a type of media, they will get the option to choose between different content types, including images, videos and …

Facebook has admitted that “for a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users’ chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the ‘preview my profile’ feature of Facebook privacy settings.â€� The social network insists that its engineers have since diagnosed and revolved the issue. “You’ve got to hand it to Facebook,â€� writes TechCrunch Europe, which first reported what it considered “a major security flaw.â€� “They certainly know how to do security -- not.â€� Added TechCrunch: “I know Facebook wants us to share more information and open up, but I’m not …

You heard it here second, or maybe third: General Motors says Joel Ewanick has been appointed vice president, U.S. Marketing, effective May 24.  Ewanick, 49, will report to Mark Reuss, president, GM North America.It may be the briefest stint in automotive history, as he started at Nissan about three weeks ago. Says GM: As the single point for marketing, Ewanick will have responsibility for improving the positioning of the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands and consumer consideration of GM vehicles in the United States. Before joining Nissan in March, Ewanick served as vice president of marketing for Hyundai …

GroupM backed addressable TV developer Invidi Technologies Corporation says it just secured over $23 million in a financing led by Google, with GroupM (a unit of holding company WPP), Motorola Ventures, and leading venture capital firms Menlo Ventures, InterWest, and EnerTech as participants. Google leads the round, which includes a second investment made by GroupM, the world’s largest media investment company, and Motorola, a leading set top box manufacturer. Other participants include repeat investors from INVIDI’s prior rounds of financing: Menlo Ventures, InterWest Partners, EnerTech Capital, Westbury Equity Partners,BDC Capital, and others. As part of Google’s commitment …

Just now, I updated my birthday on my Dunkin Donuts Perks Profile in order to get a free coffee (when I'll need a hot bev bad in January) and I saw something I've not seen before! The drop-down menu for the birth year went in ascending order, beginning with 1900. Most web sites start with the birth years of whipper-snappers. How refreshing, although I still had to scroll and scroll to find 1950-something ... :) --Nina Lentini