Forum:Privacy Policy
On July 1, 2004, a California law called the Online Privacy Protection Act (Calif. Business and Professions Code sections 22575-22579) came into effect. The law can be read in it's entirety at:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=22001-23000&file=22575-22579
There is no privacy policy at Wikia Search, which is a violation of California law. The "Privacy" link under the search box is only for logged-in users who construct profiles. It allows them to restrict certain portions of their Facebook-like profile to those on their "Friends" list. This is not a privacy policy.
What about everyone else? They get a two-year cookie as soon as they arrive at search.wikia.com that appears to have a unique ID in it. Does this mean that Wikia is tracking your search terms? Do they record your IP address also, possibly for future geotargeted advertising revenue?
There are issues now, or will be soon, regarding the sharing of data with third parties. For example, the ad feeds give the advertiser the user's IP address, in order to feed the ad. Along with that, the referrer from Wikia Search may even show the user's search terms in the URL. Also, some ad feeds take advantage of this opportunity to plant third-party cookies in the user's browser.
Wikia Search needs a detailed privacy policy that covers all of these issues.
Also, there is no information for webmasters regarding the User_agent that identifies the Wikia Search crawler, for use in the robots.txt protocol.
- See What is the User-Agent used for crawling?.--RainerBlome 22:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- Oh great. California thinks it can impose its ideas on everybody. While I agree a privacy policy is a good idea, if we need to comply with this law I suggest posting a big notice "Posting of private information by residents of California is forbidden". DJ Clayworth 20:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Let us not get carried away with current laws. Right now privacy policies, legal or not, are not worth the pixels they are displayed on. As a wit once said, promises bind only those who believe them. But seriously privacy is a big issue with search nowadays and a stated goal of Search Wikia. So the questions above deserve careful consideration. By the way, my preferred privacy policy reads: - we do not store any information about your request once it has been fulfilled. - As for cookies, it is a no-no. Even Google can do without them. Private 18:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Well said, I agree. Given that transparency is the first stated goal, the lack of a privacy policy is a particularly serious omission (:-). Or was this not the kind of transparency the project had in mind (;-)? Added this to the FAQ as What is the privacy policy of the search engine? and What is the privacy policy of the Search wiki?. As long as there is no dedicated privacy policy, by default it would be Wikia's. However, Wikia currently does not have an explicit privacy policy. The closest there is is a Terms of Use section on the Collection of personal information. By the way, this issue is made worse by the fact that the links at the bottom, including Terms of use, currently do not work. --RainerBlome 22:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)