So, obviously the biggest thing going on in digital privacy today is the Congressional hearing called by Senator Al Franken. As we’ve mentioned a couple of times, the events of the last couple of weeks have really spurred quick movement in the area, and testifying at today’s hearing will be representatives from Apple, Google, the FTC, the Justice Department, and “a consumer advocate”… [USA Today]

But at the aforementioned hearing, the powers that be ought not to think too narrowly on the subject of mobile privacy, singling out apps as the problem. Clearly there are much broader digital privacy concerns and implications at play here, and so Congress should be thinking about how it can introduce a comprehensive bill that covers all of the different privacy issues through the web, mobile, social networking and any other relevant aspect of digital… [CNET]

Either way, as we noted yesterday, there’s now a second digital privacy bill in the mix that incorporates the spirit of the FTC’s “Do Not Track” mechanism for protecting users. If you were wondering how said bill was received by privacy advocate groups, as you might expect, that would be warmly. It’s also important to note that it’s not advocating a strict “Do Not Track” that wouldn’t allow companies to track users at all, but rather it would require companies to offer users the ability to opt out, and respect such decision unless absolutely necessary for its site to function… [Ars Technica]

Not long ago, we mentioned that the upcoming version of Google’s Chrome browser will include a feature that allows users to delete the infamously pesky Flash cookies that we’ve also noted in the past can be quite a pain to get rid of. Well, the beta version of that release is apparently now available… [Google Chrome Blog]

And with all of the scrutiny on cookie tracking over the last year or so, many (mostly in advertising) have been concerned that if new legislation bars companies from cookie’ing users, digital commerce may suffer greatly. But even if that were to happen, Buyosphere may have a better way. Instead of companies “silently” collecting data on users, Buyosphere allows users to provide information to companies on what types of things are relevant to them…which, of course, in the end is pretty much the same thing, but what separates the cookie method from Buyosphere is the transparency and control… [Mashable]

Speaking of the practice of cookie’ing – as you may remember, we’ve mentioned that the EU has proposed a ban on said practice. Well, apparently the UK’s Information Commissioner thought publishing “guidance on the implementation” of the new proposal would help everyone better understand what the proposed regulation actually meant. Unfortunately, by this account, it did not…in any way… [WSJ]

As we’ve mentioned a few times recently, the EU has proposed a privacy regulation that would take effect in a couple of months that includes a “right to be forgotten” – essentially a user’s right to have his/her information/image taken down from any site he/she wishes. But it sounds like not everyone in the EU is on board, as the UK’s Communications Minister recently cautioned that the regulation might have unintended and overly burdensome consequences… [Financial Times]

And we don’t necessarily often talk about the misconceptions users have about their digital privacy (and specifically ad tracking), but we are more than aware of them. If you’re interested in understanding them better yourself, this might be a good place to start… [AdExchanger]

Well, Google probably could have cautioned online marketplace site Etsy against this move (since it was similar to the way Google rolled out Buzz last year)…nevertheless, Etsy yesterday made all of its users’ activity on the site public by default… [Business Insider]

But almost as soon as it flipped that switch on, it realized the error it had made and switched it back off… [Etsy]

Yesterday, the FTC settled its complaint with Twitter over what it deemed to be insufficient security measures that led to Twitter users accounts being hacked in the past. As part of the settlement, Twitter has agreed to “establish a more rigorous information-security policy to prevent user accounts from being hijacked” in the future… [eWeek]

But Twitter isn’t the only party the FTC settled with yesterday. The Commission also settled a complaint with the online ad provider Chitika, in which it had charged that the service was continuing to track users who had actually opted out of their tracking… [Washington Post]

And finally, Microsoft launched the latest version of Internet Explorer – IE 9 – yesterday, which as we’ve been mentioning for far too long here also includes a feature that allows users to opt out of ad tracking… [WSJ]

But if you’re not interested in using IE 9, you can still disable third party (tracking) cookies in Firefox and Chrome…here’s how… [CNET]

The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a second hearing on online privacy for next Wednesday, the goal of which is apparently to understand whether or not government intervention is necessary in order to properly protect our privacy on the web… [The Hill]

We’ve mentioned several times recently that Microsoft’s upcoming latest version of its Internet Explorer browser (IE9) would emphasize privacy controls, including potentially the ability to opt out of ad tracking. Well, we now know that we can expect to find out what exactly that all looks like next Monday, March 14… [Microsoft IE Blog]

Yesterday, we mentioned how the EU just approved a law that would require all sites to get explicit permission from users in order to “track” them using cookies. Later, Gizmodo explained just how silly and pointless such an effort would be… [Gizmodo]

Finally, no stranger to litigation, Google may find itself in another courtroom to defend itself against a plaintiff who is displeased with its practice of scanning gmail users’ mail in order to serve them relevant ads. Of course, this is not a new issue for Google to deal with, but nevertheless, it happened… [InformationWeek]

In honor of Data Privacy Day today, Monster.com is announcing that it will be giving users additional privacy controls, in advance of any kind of legislative mandate on the subject (behavioral ad tracking, that is)… [Adweek]

And speaking of self-regulation, a group of web analytics consultants is calling for the industry to adhere to a “Code of Ethics” governing the use of the data they collect through their business…two important tenets being – to always allow users to opt out of analytics tracking and to provide clear privacy policies… [WSJ]

And speaking of privacy policies and clarity – in case you weren’t sure, the “real reason” we don’t read privacy policies (which should be pretty obvious) is that they’re length is about the offline equivalent of an epic novel… [Mashable]

Yesterday we mentioned a Harris Interactive Survey the results of which showed that we’re really pretty confident about our privacy online. Yet, today the results of a different survey show that we’re more concerned with our privacy online than bankruptcy… [Press Release]

Yesterday, we highlighted Mozilla’s efforts to give users the option of opting out of behavioral ad tracking through its popular Firefox web browser. Well, not to be left behind, Google gives users of its Chrome browser the same option… [Google Public Policy Blog]

But which of the two offers better protection? Well, you’ll probably have to try both to really find out for yourself, but privacy advocate group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says ~ Mozilla > Google [EFF Deeplinks]

Google’s veritable shadow (and by that I mean the consumer privacy advocate, Consumer Watchdog) has now gone so far as to ask Congress to investigate the company’s “cozy” relationship with the Obama Administration, and how it may be affecting government regulation of the company… [NetworkWorld]

Finally, while we’re discussing the government and online privacy – the Justice Department is expected to announce its desire for ISPs to keep better track of what their customers are doing on the web, trying to “strike a better balance between privacy and police concerns”… [CNET]

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned an alternative search engine – DuckDuckGo – that was trying to take a similar approach as Diaspora did with Facebook – touting the fact that it doesn’t “track users,” and we included an image of a billboard reading “Google tracks you. We don’t.” Well, that billboard design/copy apparently wasn’t just a concept, and yesterday it went up in San Francisco (as you can see in the image above)… [Wired]

Yesterday, we mentioned that the Association of National Advertisers was imploring advertisers/ad networks to follow industry self-regulation guidelines. Today (err, tomorrow, sounds like), the Digital Advertising Alliance is apparently set to announce it has approved TRUSTe’s ad-tracking icons (a particular form of industry self-regulation), which we’ve mentioned before, but are aimed at alerting users “that ads are being served based on data collected from consumers as they surf the Web”… [Mediapost]

Recently, we mentioned how Google was in hot water in South Korea for breaking that country’s telecomm laws with its Street View wi-fi sniffing chicanery. Well, South Korea isn’t the only country currently on Google’s tail for said wi-fi gaffe; Spain is actually bringing suit against Google for violating its privacy laws… [WSJ]

We’ve seen contextual/behavioral advertising in several different contexts, but for the first time in 2011, we may start seeing contextual ads when viewing our bank statements online…which obviously raises questions if advertisers are “reading” bank statements in order to serve ads… [Washington Post]

Two quick pieces of news in the realm of online behavioral tracking…

First, Adobe has taken kind of a beating over the last six months or so regarding its flash cookies, which some call “zombie” cookies because of their ability to regenerate even when deleted. But yesterday it announced that it has made it easier for users to manage and delete these cookies, potentially helping its own cause a little… [PC Mag]

Second, the Better Advertising Project – the online advertising industry’s self-proclaimed, self-regulatory body – has been bought by Publicis Groupe and rebranded, “Evidon”… [Press Release]

If you’re concerned about your privacy on Facebook, a good idea is to set up lists of friends, so you can control who sees what information about/from you [Lifehacker]

Hopefully this prediction will come true (though I’m slightly skeptic), but “lawsuits will pressure Apple and Google to protect user privacy” – and basically give us control over what information gets shared with advertisers [Reuters]

Along those same lines, maybe it’s time we focused on how to give users control over their information while at the same time causing minimal damage to the online advertising industry… [ClickZ]