Pamela Jones Harbour, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, expressed strong disapproval of the way Google launched its Buzz social networking service, saying that it violated user privacy on a number of levels, according to PC World.
The computing news magazine reports that, at an FTC privacy workshop, Jones Harbour said that she was "especially concerned that technology companies are learning harmful lessons from each other’s attempts to push the privacy [envelope]," and that "even the most respected and popular online companies, the ones who claim to respect privacy, continue to launch products where the guiding privacy policy seems to be, ‘Throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.’"
Jones Harbour’s comments aptly illustrate a dilemma faced by search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners, along with most forms of search marketing professionals. On the one hand, online services offer great opportunities to collect large amounts of valuable marketing data. On the other, users may stop using a service that they feel pays inadequate attention to the security of their personally identifiable information.
