Yatedo is illegal even as mere search engine!

Probably Yatedo is not even aware, but there are specific laws and regulations that apply to Search Engines. In fact, the European Commission have established since 2008 "a clear set of responsibilities" on search engine companies regarding their handling of user data. The opinion, issued by the Article 29 Working Group, states that the European Union Data Protection Directive requires search engines to "delete or irreversibly anonymise personal data once they no longer serve the specified and legitimate purpose" for which they were collected. The opinion further holds that European privacy laws generally apply to search engines "even when their headquarters are outside [Europe]," and requires that search engines must delete personal data within six months of collection.

Yatedo is breaching these rules: they are saving personal data without anonymisation and they do not even think of deleting it within six months! They have gathered your information without your consent and if you check the information out you will notice that it has been gathered over an year ago. So they are not respecting even this laws!
Yatedo is illegal!
Do not subscribe if you want to preserve your privacy and that of your network!
Write today to the national and international bodies that can protect you Let's close Yatedo down!

What CAN (and SOULD) you do in the UK?

After contacting CNIL, the French Authodity for Data Protection as Yatedo is allegedly based in France, contact the UK Information Commissioner's Office. Describe your problems with Yatedo and ask for their action.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

You can find many useful informations on their web site: http://www.ico.gov.uk/
If you want to make a complaint online start from this page: http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx
For contacting them you have the following options:

Helpline
0303 123 1113 open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Enquire about notification
If you would like to ask about the obligation to notify under the Data Protection Act send an email to the Notification Team at notification@ico.gsi.gov.uk

Advice about the law
If you would like to ask about the legislation covered by the ICO, or to report a breach of security, contact the First Contact Team at casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk

Request for information
If you would like to request information held by the ICO in its capacity as a public authority, or request information about you that is held by the ICO, contact the Internal Compliance Team at internalcompliancedept@ico.gsi.gov.uk

Got an ongoing case?
If you have an ongoing case with the ICO and would like to send further information send an email to casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk.

Address (head office)
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
View Google Map
Tel: 0303 123 1113
Fax: 01625 524510
Regional offices
In addition to the head office in Wilmslow, there are also offices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Send notification forms to the Wilmslow office, not the regional offices.
Scotland
Information Commissioner's Office – Scotland
93 - 95 Hanover Street
Edinburgh EH2 1DJ
Tel: 0131 301 5071
Fax: 0131 301 5069
Email: scotland@ico.gsi.gov.uk

Wales
Information Commissioner's Office – Wales
Cambrian Buildings
Mount Stuart Square
Cardiff CF10 5FL
Tel: 029 2044 8044
Fax: 029 2044 8045
Email: wales@ico.gsi.gov.uk

Northern Ireland
Information Commissioner's Office – Northern Ireland
51 Adelaide Street
Belfast, BT2 8FE
Tel: 028 9026 9380
Fax: 028 9026 9388
Email: ni@ico.gsi.gov.uk

Remember: DO NOT SUBSCRIBE hoping to cancel your profile! This is just a scam to get other information about you and your contacts!

Yatedo's copyright breach

A new debate is forming in the USA regarding online copyrights. In brief, the discussion focuses on the right of having links to news articles posted outside the original website, especially on blogs (more details about the facts can be found here). It seems that the original copyrights' owners can oblige the bloggers to pay a settlement or confront them in court.
The practice of suing bloggers has been condemned by Democratic Underground that decided to fight against it with the help of Electronic Frontier Foundation. The matter is not yet settled, but we are curious how it will turn out.
Although we consider that posting links is not against the copyrights of the authors (as it might increase the traffic to the original article), what really is a copyright breach is copying the articles, saving them outside the reach of the author and presenting them publicly. And this is just what Yatedo is doing. If you have a blog or have writen online articles, check out your Yatedo profile to see if they are presenting these articles.
Often they have copied the materials found online and re-published them on their site. This is an outrageous breach of copyright and would give you (the author of the texts) the right to pursue charges legally against Yatedo. If you find your articles on Yatedo and you do not want to have them there, write to Yatedo requesting removal and indicating that their practices are against the law.

Check out your Yatedo profile but DO NOT SUBSCRIBE! As already indicated in several of our posts, when subscribing Yatedo they request other passwords from you in order to "verify" that you are the person you claim you are. The fact is that they get access to even more of your information and even information from your network!
By not subscribing, you do not allow them to update their information and extend their database, thus, in time, it will become obsolete.

What CAN (and SHOULD) you do in Germany?

If you are a German national and are worried about Yatedo abusing your data, you should contact the French Privacy Authority (CNIL - see related articles) and the German Authority.
Here are the details for the German Privacy Authority:

Der Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit
Husarenstraße 30 | D-53117 Bonn | Tel.: +49 (0)22899-7799-0
Fax: +49 (0)22899-7799-550
E-Mail: poststelle@bfdi.bund.de 
Internet: http://www.datenschutz.bund.de/

Anybody can contact them to indicate Data Privacy issues and request support. So start writing about your experience with Yatedo and how they are treating your private data.
Also, on their web site http://www.datenschutz.bund.de/ you can access a forum where you can discuss privacy information issues as well as more sources of Privacy information.

Remember: do not subscribe to YATEDO hoping to be able to delete your profile! They are a fraud and are only going to steal more information about you and your friends!

Facebook acknowledges privacy problems, makes you imagine the worst for Yatedo

Monday, the 18th of October 2010, Facebook publicly discussed problems with handling user information. It seems that the company had recently learned that several applications were passing a piece of data known as a user ID to outside companies in a way that violated its privacy policy. User IDs are unique numbers assigned to Facebook members that are used by Facebook and its applications to identify them. The applications on Facebook, including games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, are transmitting user IDs to third parties. Three of those applications were also transmitting information about a user's friends.

Just imagine than what Yatedo can do with your illegally obtained information. Not only they have saved your profile information without you agreeing on it, but they also can do whatever they want with your information!

Act now against Yatedo's privacy abuse! Write to the French Privacy authority (CNIL) and your national privacy authority describing your problem and experience with Yatedo. They can act against Yatedo now and protect your information!

Do not subscribe to Yatedo and instruct your friends not to subscribe, otherwise your information can still be stolen if linked with them! By not subscribing, you are making sure that, in time, their information becomes obsolete and that Yatedo will be closed by "old age".

Privacy is important!

The European Commission is very serious regarding privacy rights. In fact, the 30th of September it has sued the UK for not fully implementing EU rules on the confidentiality of electronic communications such as e-mail or internet browsing.
The claims against UK are the following:

• there is no independent national authority to supervise the interception of some communications, although the establishment of such authority is required under the ePrivacy and Data Protection Directives, in particular to hear complaints regarding interception of communications
• current UK law authorises interception of communications not only where the persons concerned have consented to interception but also when the person intercepting the communications has ‘reasonable grounds for believing’ that consent to do so has been given. These UK provisions do not comply with EU rules defining consent as “freely given, specific and informed indication of a person’s wishes”
• current UK law prohibiting and providing sanctions in case of unlawful interception are limited to ‘intentional’ interception only, whereas EU law requires Members States to prohibit and to ensure sanctions against any unlawful interception regardless of whether committed intentionally or not. (Citation from here.)

This is the right attention to give to privacy issues. We are sure that when Yatedo comes to the commission's attention it will be closed.
All of you that are concearned about their own privacy, contact the European entities as indicated in our other posts. Indicate Yatedo to them as a privacy breaching company, and describe your experience with them, the fact that they refuse to cancell your profiles and private data, etc.

More to come against Yatedo

After yesterday's good news, we are expecting also movement at European level.
In fact, the European Commission has announced some months ago its intention to review and modify Data Protection and Privacy laws and rights in order to update them to the state of the art technology.
The European Commissioner Viviane Reding said the new rules should encourage companies to take privacy issues into account from the beginning of a new technology's development cycle, a concept she called "privacy by design".
This means, of course, that young start-up's will need to comply to these regulations even if they are in beta format... alas, they should not function while breaching privacy laws!

Soon Yatedo might be closed :)

France is moving towards more privacy with legislative measures. After an year of hard work, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (a french politician) has presented interesting results for Internet users the 13th October, during the signing of a juridical act by various representatives of social networks, blogs, search engines, association, and so on.
One of the measure in this juridical act indicates that search engines (the case of Yatedo) should commit themselves not to reference data that have been requested to be deleted or that are in private "personal environments".
This is exactly what Yatedo has been denying:
1- they are not deleting profiles under request and
2. they are still presenting information that is no longer public.
Both this actions are against this specific new juridical act.
We at the Close Yatedo community would like to thank Miss Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet for her efforts for our privacy!
Here is the citation of the news in french press:

Consciente de la fragilisation du respect de la vie privée sur Internet, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet a mobilisé, depuis le mois de novembre dernier, l’ensemble des acteurs concernés autour de la mise en place d’un droit à l’oubli numérique.
Afin de conclure cette première année de concertation et de consultation, la secrétaire d’Etat a réuni, ce jour, les représentants des réseaux sociaux, blogs, moteurs de recherche2, associations familiales et de protection de l’enfance3 autour de la signature d’une charte permettant à l’internaute de garder la maîtrise des données personnelles qu’il a publiées sur internet.

Les acteurs de l’Internet s’engagent à donner une traduction concrète aux principes de consentement, de droit à l’information et de droit d’opposition, prévus par la loi4. Parmi les dispositions les plus significatives et les plus attendues, on trouve la mise en place d’un « bureau des réclamations » virtuel et la facilitation de la suppression d’un compte, mesures plébiscitées respectivement par 92% et par 97% des internautes5. Quant aux moteurs de recherche, ils s’engagent à ne plus référencer des données qui ont fait l’objet d’une demande de suppression ou qui figurent dans des « espaces personnels » réservés.

What CAN (and SHOULD) you do in Belgium?

Still having troubles making your voice heard against Yatedo?
For our readers from Belgium, we have some good news. There is a special entity dedicated to support your privacy needs.

The Commission for the Protection of Privacy, better known as the Privacy Commission, is an independent authority ensuring the protection of privacy during the processing of personal data.

You can find more information about your rights and privacy laws in Belgium here:
http://www.privacycommission.be/
There is an online form that you can fill in with your questions here:
http://www.privacycommission.be/fr/contact.html

Write to the Commission indicating the problems you have with Yatedo, how they are breaching privacy laws and your personal experience in interacting with them.

Yatedo's privacy policy

A legal privacy policy should indicate what personal data is collected and for what purposes.
Are you aware what information is Yatedo gathering about you? Don't worry it is not your fault that Yatedo does not really tell you!
Do not subscribe and act immediatelly by contacting the privacy authorities (see our posts)!

Here is an image of the page with the Yatedo privacy policy (with a little help from Google cache...) as we have been indicated that it is almost impossible to reach by the "normal" path...

Don't subscribe to YATEDO!

We have already introduced some of the dangers lurking in a Yatedo subscription, and here is another one.
When subscribing, Yatedo requests you to indicate your passwords for other accounts, such as LinkedIn. The rational is to verify that you are the person claiming to be, thus that you can claim your Yatedo profile.
The fact is that providing them with your password gives them access to other information about yourself and the other persons that are connected with you.
For example, if there are persons in your LinkedIn network that do not have a public profile, but that give you access to their profile as you are connected, their information can also be accessed by Yatedo and rendered public.
So, if you still want to try to subscribe to Yatedo in order to cancel your profile, consider that you are not only exposing yourselfe to even more privacy breaches but you are also exposing the persons in your network!

Protect your information and your connections' information! Follow the legal way and write to the privacy regulators in order to have your information removed!