In the face of technology that will soon be able not only to track an individual's movements but predict them too, people are far too relaxed about protecting their privacy, according to social psychologist Saadi Lahlou, writing in a special issue of Social Science Information on cognitive technologies, published today by SAGE.

Newly developed software will help to allay patients' fears about who has access to their confidential data. Research published today in the open access journal BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making describes a computer program capable of deleting details from medical records which may identify patients, while leaving important medical information intact.

As Google prepares to launch Street View in the U.K., and has already launched it in France, concerns over privacy have been raised by the group Privacy International, which says it feels Street View violates privacy laws.

On June 3rd a group of privacy advocates, including California-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumer Federation of California, and ACLU of Northern California - among others - sent a detailed letter to Google CEO CEO Eric Schmidt, charging that the lack of a privacy link on Google's home page was not just "alarming," but violated the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003.

In an age when ID theft, phishing and online fraud have become serious global issues, a huge gap has emerged between consumers in the UK and continental Europe on the way they rate data privacy and dependable IT in building trust with the organisations they do business with, says a new report from Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS).

Agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau produce a voluminous amount of data, much of which is of tremendous value to social scientists and other researchers. But the data also includes personal information that, under the law, must be protected and could be harmful were it to fall into the wrong hands.

Privacy advocates applaud steps to give customers more control of their information and make search data anonymous.

Microsoft and Ask.com Call on Industry

People are willing to pay extra to buy items from online retailers when they can easily ascertain how retailers' policies will protect their privacy, a new Carnegie Mellon University study shows. Participants in the laboratory study used a Carnegie Mellon shopping search engine called Privacy Finder, http://www.privacyfinder.org, which can automatically evaluate a Web site's privacy policies and display the results on the search results page.