Last week, we highlighted how some of the big web/digital guns (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Zynga) had banded together to oppose California’s proposed bill (the second of the state’s proposed privacy bills) that would require such companies to have users set up their privacy settings upon registration, and default such settings to private. Well, now large and small alike have aligned, with a number of startups (including Oodle, as you might have guessed from the image accompanying today’s post) joining the big boys in their fight against the proposed legislation… [paidcontent.org]

Speaking of Facebook (a mention counts), while this doesn’t have direct privacy implications at the moment, we’re more than sure it is relevant to the privacy discussion when we note that apparently The Social Network is recruiting a team of diplomats to handle government relations in a number of different regions globally… [San Jose Mercury News]

Nothing like voicing concern at the 11th hour…apparently over in Europe, the EU is set to put a 2009 privacy bill into action today that would require users’ consent in order for websites/companies to set cookies in their browsers, but yesterday a number of concerned parties expressed that they are unsure of how the law will be applied across the 27 EU nations… [Bloomberg]

Well, it might be easy to overlook something like this as innocuous, and chances are it probably is, but just a few years after Yahoo! said it would only store users’ search data for 90 days, citing privacy issues, it is now saying that it will keep user search data for 18 months…quite the 180, it would seem… [NY Times]

Elsewhere in privacy news about search engine companies – it’s hard to believe that almost a year after Google’s Street View wifi sniffing fiasco, certain countries are just now expressing their displeasure with the incident(s). The latest is The Netherlands, which has apparently “ordered” Google to “contact 3.6 million Dutch WiFi owners and offer them a way to have their data deleted”…eek… [AP]

Not a week goes by when we don’t see someone decrying Facebook for its privacy controls. This week, it’s the UK digital security firm Sophos, which called out three issues in particular it thought Facebook wasn’t doing a good enough job on…those being – 1) privacy controls are opt-in, 2) “lack of vetted app developers,” and 3) having its secure connection (https) turned off by default… [PC Mag]

And it may not have been in direct response to Sophos’ “open letter,” but Facebook actually did address at least one of Sophos’ concerns, now ensuring that even if users engage an app with an unsecure connection, Facebook will switch the user’s connection back to https automatically. It also introduced a couple of other privacy/security features as well, for information on which I direct you to this post… [Facebook]

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]

For a company that powers the bulk of users’ internet searches, not to mention personal email, Google has and may always have a slew of privacy problems, BUT despite that, at least they know how to handle them in terms of PR… [Business Insider]

After, as we mentioned yesterday, the UK law firm ACS:Law’s servers got hacked and thousands of Sky broadband users who shared porn were leaked, Sky has naturally ceased all “cooperation” with ACS:Law until it can demonstrate that it’s servers are secure enough to warrant cooperation [UK Press Association]

Policy/privacy officers from Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft got together yesterday to talk about the state of privacy on the web… [Forbes]

Like it or not, but chances are, it’s going to be easier for law enforcement to wiretap our communications on the web in the future (whether the near or not-so-near) [RCR Wireless News]

Privacy winner of the week = Yahoo…? [Mashable]

The question that perplexes us all – Will Facebook privacy ever be simple? [PC World]

Taking ownership of your privacy = not sharing everything that pops into your head…how novel and insightful [Lansing State Journal]

And now, our own country is going after Google. Well, not the whole country, but Connecticut, anyway… [LA Times]

But, it looks like Google voluntarily [and temporarily] stopping its Street View data collection in Hong Kong has at least kept it out of hot water there [WSJ]

Sounds like neither side is happy enough with the proposed Privacy bill in Congress right now [Broadcasting and Cable]

Facebook Effect (which goes on sale today) Author David Kirpatrick seems to have drunk the Facebook Kool Aid – he thinks we’re becoming more public [Daily Finance]

This article’s headline is high in the running for most obvious of the year [LA Times]

So much for Facebook’s privacy “fiasco” – the site is bringing in new visitors in spades [TechCrunch]

The recent privacy mess has been a boon for some people… [San Francisco Chronicle]

Well, Quit Facebook Day was yesterday…its impact? Only 34,100 out of over 450,000,000 users pledged to quit (and who knows how many actually did). But then, it wasn’t really about actually quitting, was it? [The Register]

By the way, Quit Facebook Day apparently only involved 2% of US users [PC Mag]

Unfortunately for Facebook, Congress didn’t quit either, and now it’s asking Facebook to explain exactly what information the company has given to 3rd parties without its user’s knowledge [Inside Facebook]

If Facebook ever actually rolls out those QR codes it appeared to be testing a few months back, they could be in for another privacy battle [InventorSpot]

A solid (and simple) primer on Google‘s StreetView data collection accident [CNET]

In other Google Street View news – Austria has banned all Street View cars until it completes its probe into the matter [Asia One News]

For all of the poor approaches to privacy we’ve seen lately, Yahoo seems to have learned a thing or two – explaining (in advance) how upcoming changes will impact its users privacy, BEFORE implementing those changes [TechCrunch]

One industry that has tons of privacy implications but that has been really flying under the rader is – mobile [GigaOm]

Facebook is just one of many online privacy threats – most visible because of its ubiquity and blatantly obvious privacy implications. But what about the others? [San Jose Mercury News]