Not like it should be all that surprising, but ironically, the Wall Street Journal‘s cautionary stories on tracking cookies actually employ such cookies themselves… [PC World]

And just in case it wasn’t clear on Friday, several levels of government are now involved in trying to sort out such user-tracking online, including the FTC, the Commerce Department and a newly-created “privacy watchdog” [ABC News]

If you’re REALLY concerned about your Facebook privacy, here’s an interesting way to safeguard it…deactivate your Facebook account every time you’re ready to sign out, and then re-activate it the next time you log in [CNN]

Speaking of Facebook and privacy, Facebook iPhone app users can now access and change their privacy settings from the app, although clicking on privacy settings actually just takes you to the mobile web page where you can access them [Mashable]

I haven’t been able to get far in this article since it’s hidden behind the WSJ’s paywall, but recently the EU proposed the users’ “right to be forgotten” and have government regulate what data companies that collect personal user information can store…this story seems to posit not to hold your breath waiting for government to actually protect you on the web [WSJ]

And finally, remember, friends – there’s a lot of talk about privacy in ad tracking and on social networks, but e-mail has its issues as well…once you fire off that message, it’s privacy is out of your hands [Boston.com]

Microsoft, Photobucket, Yahoo!, Comcast, Career Builder, Merriam-Webster and AOL relate their tracking cookie practices to Congress… [Ars Technica]

To piggyback on yesterday’s New York Times story on the privacy pitfalls of HTML 5, a hacker recently developed the Evercookie to illustrate just how intense they can be. The Evercookie stores data about what sites you visit and what you upload to those sites in 10 different places on your computer – thus, just emptying your browser’s cookies isn’t going to get rid of it… [Fast Company]

Oh, and speaking of things that won’t go away even when deleted – did you know that if you delete your Facebook photos, it can take over a year for Facebook to delete them from its servers? At least they’re not accessible by anyone who doesn’t know exactly where they are, but still… [Ars Technica]

Last week, we mentioned a recent study that revealed a decent subsection of Android apps that were “misusing personal information.” Well, it turns out that’s not a practice that is just exclusive to Android – it’s also happening with 3rd party iPhone apps [Engadget]

In advance of any actual legislative action, a large advertising group has unveiled its program to alert users to which/when ads are using their personal information and allow them to opt out of such tracking [NY Times]

The New York Times had a nice little piece about Facebook guru Mark Zuckerberg‘s right hand woman over the weekend in which it highlighted all the ways she helps keep the company running like a well-oiled machine. But one place where she probably isn’t going to help (users, anyway) is privacy… [Gawker]

In the wake of last week’s Rutgers suicide tragedy, NJ is proposing stiffer penalties for invasion of privacy to combat the ease with which it can be facilitated in today’s digital world [NJ.com]

The “7 Biggest Facebook Fails” in honor of The Social Network being a box office hit… [MTV Clutch Blog]

So, just FYI – if you’re using Internet Explorer and its cookie blocker, you might be interested to know that a recent Carnegie Mellon study revealed that about 1/3 of the 33,000 sites surveyed still allowed cookies to be installed [NY Times]

The EU is currently debating how to regulate the online ad industry in terms of targeting. One proposal is perhaps a “heavy opt-out,” meaning basically hitting users over the head with the ability to opt-out [WSJ]

Speaking of the EU, could its strict privacy laws impede the development of cloud computing? [NY Times]

Just in case you want to disable Facebook Places and aren’t sure how… [Newsday via Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

Despite its braintrust’s advanced warning that the code wouldn’t be bug free, critics aren’t holding back in evaluating Diaspora’s alpha release [Top US News]

The Wall Street Journal‘s latest Privacy series = how to protect your children’s privacy online [WSJ]

And finally, Google and German officials met today on reconciling Germany’s strict privacy regulations and Google’s Street View features/practices/policies [Reuters]

The New Yorker recently conducted a LENGTHY interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in which one of the things discussed was Facebook’s privacy “problems” – Zuckerberg thinks it’s a third-rail issue and that some vocal critics will “take any minor misstep…and turn it into as big a deal as possible” [New Yorker]

Often the real currency in “social games” is your personal information, not just those credits you buy [TMCNet]

When you delete tracking cookies, typically any company deploying them must “start over” when you revisit a site that employs them, rather than picking up where it left off. Good to know… [WSJ]

Just your daily reminder that Germans are all about data privacy – recently 7500 German citizens in Berlin protested the government and private agencies data collection practices [AFP]

It would intuitively seem like “privacy” and “intimacy” are as dichotomous as wet and dry, but on the web, maybe that’s not quite the case [Inventorspot]

The Washington Post calls WikiLeaks a “criminal enterprise,” and says that its actions “arguably constitute material support for terrorism.” Given that the site created a national uproar last week when it disclosed 76,000 private US documents, it’s hard to see how it’s not a threat, and while the internet has always provided broad support for freedom of speech, I’m not so sure divulging the names of US intelligence operatives (in at least one instance) and other such actions are worth protecting… [Washington Post]

There’s no doubt that privacy is a concern online (I mean, how could you dispute that). And current privacy policies are both indecipherable and unenforceable by consumers. So change is necessary. But before acting, Congress may want to see what kind of insight the FTC can offer from its efforts over the last year to learn more about privacy online. With that context(/those recommendations), perhaps any legislation might actually be effective in combatting the current privacy issues on the web [LA Times]

According to recent stats from mobile security vendor, Lookout, Inc., more than 1/4 of free Android apps and more than 1/3 of free iPhone apps have the ability to access your location. Also, 8% of Android apps and 14% of iPhone apps have the ability to access your contacts. Of course, in the case of location, at least on the iPhone I know often the app(s) will tell you if they are accessing your location and will ask you to hit “ok” if you’ll allow them to, but nevertheless, interesting to note… [Lookout Inc. Blog]

There’s been a lot of talk lately about companies and advertisers tracking you and your behavior/interests online. Here’s an example of an advertiser that gives companies the ability to follow you around the web, so to speak. Criteo allows companies like Zappos (in this case) to continue to offer you products/services you had once investigated on their site (and presumably on the internet at large) on other sites that you frequent. Sure, it offers you the ability to opt out by clicking on a “Why am I being shown this banner” link in the advertisement and opting out via Criteo’s site. But it still seems kind of intrusive, not to mention obnoxious… [AdAge]

Maybe this isn’t 100% privacy related, but the town of Riverhead on Long Island is apparently using Google Earth to find people who have “unpermitted” pools. Through their “efforts,” the town has already levied $75,000 worth of fines to residents with such “unpermitted” pools…[TechCrunch]

Lesson learned the hard way – a California woman called Dell tech support in order to try and “find” nude pictures she took of herself to send to her boyfriend (which, you know, there’s obviously no way anyone else would ever see them that way…except, well, the tech support guy helping her “find” them)…The good news? He found them. The bad news? He put them on the internet…naturally… [via ABC San Francisco]

According to TheStreet.com readers, Wal-Mart’s plans to use RFID to control its inventory “don’t invade shopper privacy”…which seems like a fair assessment – the only concern is that Wal-Mart could potentially “track” customers whose licenses have state-mandated RFID tags (Washington and Michigan use such technology), but frankly, that’s not so much a technology issue as it is an employee misconduct issue (see Google StreetView), unless of course Wal-Mart were instructing its employees to use the RFID technology in that way or to specifically retain inadvertently collected data… [The Street]

A WSJ survey of the top 50 sites in the US reveals what you should already know – they track your online habits and interests. So, you know, nothing explosive about that news, but it is interesting to see the extent to which these sites track user data and which sites are the biggest “perpetrators” (and on that subject, here’s a tip – use Merriam Webster’s online, and leave Dictionary.com alone)… [WSJ]

In what (intentionally or unintentionally) may be a companion story, a couple of users have also sued companies including Quantcast, ABC, NBC and eight others, alleging that the companies use flash cookies to track users web habits that don’t just die when you clear all your browers private data – they “respawn”… [WSJ]

So, despite the fact that here and all over the rest of the internets, we’ve talked about Facebook privacy enough to choke a horse, maybe you still haven’t looked into your own Facebook privacy settings to see what in fact you are sharing publicly. If that’s the case, maybe dotrights.org and a number of other tools programmed by outsiders can help you [AFP]

Students at the University of Illinois at Chicago conducted a survey regarding Facebook and privacy over the last year, attempting to rebut the notion that teenagers don’t care about privacy. And through their survey they found that indeed, the participating teenagers did increasingly access/change their privacy settings from 2009 to 2010 [Student's Findings - First Monday]

Shocking news of the day – these are some uncertain times we live in…with respect to our privacy online, that is. Are we so blinded by the pitchforks and chanting that we forget the benefits of sharing information publicly? Regardless, I’d argue that again, it’s not about the benefits or costs of sharing information, it’s about the particular approach to sharing information. Is our information being shared automatically, without our consent, or do we control what we share? That’s the real crux of it to me… [CNET]