Australians are either ‘not sure’ or only ‘somewhat understand’ how several leading apps use and/or share their data, according to a new Roy Morgan privacy study.

The sophistication of the Australian digital market, plus the rapid rate local marketers have embraced personalisation and metrics, is phenomenal, global leaders from the Oracle Data Cloud team believe. Now, they say, it’s up the marketers globally to ask the right questions about where they want this technology to go.

Employees across more than nine in 10 of Australia’s top 100 brands believe their organisations don’t do a good enough job of being transparent with consumers about how their information is being used.

Cryptography researchers at MIT and Harvard have developed software called Sieve that is designed to help users keep track of encrypted personal data and better manage it in the cloud.

Consumers have historically been happy to hand over personal data in exchange for value. But the rise of advanced analytics and the Internet of Things is bringing us to a point where they could well value their privacy more.

"We at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security," said Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this month during an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) event where he was honored for corporate leadership. "We can and we must provide both in equal measure."

A lawsuit that alleges Yahoo's email scanning practices are illegal can proceed as a class action complaint, a development that will shine the spotlight on the Yahoo Mail use of messages' content for advertising purposes.

As Google dives into the Wi-Fi and cellular network services business in the US, some are wondering just where the company is headed.

Twitter, hungry for new data to fuel its targeted advertising, will start looking at what other apps its users have downloaded.

Facebook wants its users to take control of their own privacy.

As Facebook began rolling out a global advertising network on Monday that will capitalize on all it knows from tracking users across the web, German consumer organizations immediately raised their voices in protest.

A new social network is generating buzz for its hard stance against paid advertising and data collection. But how the site really works, when it comes to privacy, is a little more nuanced.

More Australians are happier sharing personal and credit card details online even as they increasingly fear their privacy will be invaded as a result of technology innovation.

Facebook fan page operators are not legally responsible for the personal data of visitors to their pages, but Facebook is, a German appeals court ruled.

After years of cajoling their users into sharing every thought, emotion and selfie, online firms are seeing that providing more private online spaces might also be profitable.

Facebook executive, Sheryl Sandberg, speaking about the company's controversial psychological experiment for the first time, has apologised for upsetting users.

Facebook is moving to offer users a familiar trade-off: their browsing privacy in return for more targeted advertising. Those who find that no deal at all will be able to use opt-out tools, but all users will be given a little more control over the ads they see.

Targeted advertisements are headed to smart fridges, smart thermostats and other Internet-connected devices, raising potentially new privacy issues for consumers who use those products.

Consumers are happy to share personal information with companies but baulk if asked for too much detail, according to a new Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA) survey.

Telecom operator Telefónica has launched the first mobile ad-exchange platform to use the operator's customer demographics and real-time location data to serve targeted mobile ads, the company said on Wednesday.

Microsoft promised to subject itself to a more rigorous process before searching through its customers' email accounts in the future after a recent legal case revealed that the company searched for evidence of theft of its trade secrets in a Hotmail account.