Tag: misleading

Advertising & Marketing

‘King’s Counsel’ titles may violate rules on misleading ads, experts caution

The head of Ontario’s legal regulator declined the government’s offer of a King’s Counsel designation due to the lack of selection criteria, she told the Star, as experts warn that using the title may violate professional conduct rules for lawyers.

Had Law Society of Ontario treasurer Jacqueline Horvat accepted the KC offer, she would have “risked giving credibility to a suspect government initiative,” said University of Ottawa law professor Amy Salyzyn, who specializes in legal ethics.

The Ford government has been staring down a patronage scandal for reviving the special title for lawyers last month and handing it out to numerous Tory politicians, staffers and loyalists. No public call for nominations, selection criteria, or information about the appointment process was made public prior to the announcement that 91 lawyers had received the designation.

The title carries no special privileges aside from allowing lawyers to put the initials “KC” next to their name and wear silk robes to court.

However, questions have been raised about whether recent recipients would be in breach of the Law Society’s rules of professional conduct around advertising, should they decide to market themselves as a KC.

Those rules caution against marketing awards, rankings and third-party endorsements that could be misleading to the public, including those that “do not genuinely reflect the performance of the lawyer and the quality of services provided by the lawyer but appear to do so,” and “are not the result of a reasonable evaluative process.”

Former Law Society treasurer Gavin MacKenzie told the Star that the recent batch of KC recipients, “with a few exceptions,” could fail to meet that criteria. He said it is “evident” that the list of recipients was largely based on party loyalty and not merit, and he also pointed to the lack of a public appointment process.

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Android Apps

Study finds Google Play app privacy labels are ‘false or misleading’

An investigation into data safety labels on the Google Play Store has allegedly uncovered “serious loopholes” that allow apps like Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook to easily provide false or misleading information regarding how user data is shared. The study, conducted by the Mozilla Foundation, identified 40 of the most globally downloaded Android apps on the Google Play Store and discovered almost 80 percent had discrepancies between their privacy policies and the information listed on Google Play’s data safety section.

Google launched its data privacy section for the Play Store last year, noting that developers had sole responsibility to provide “complete and accurate declarations” for the information collected by their apps by filling out a Google Data Safety Form. Mozilla argues that these self-reported privacy labels may not accurately reflect what user data is actually being collected due to shortcomings in the safety form’s honor-based system, such as having vague definitions for “collection” and “sharing” and failing to require apps to report data shared with “service providers.”

Mozilla studied the top 20 free apps and top 20 paid apps and then graded them with a score of “poor,” “needs improvement,” or “OK” based on its findings. Sixteen of the 40 total apps, including Twitter, Minecraft, and Facebook, received a “poor” grade, while 15 apps — including TikTok, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, WhatsApp, and Instagram — achieved “needs improvement.” Just six apps received an “OK” grade, most of which were mobile games such as Candy Crush Saga and Subway Surfers. Three apps — UC Browser-Safe, Fast, Private; League of Stickman – Best acti; and Terraria — hadn’t even filled out the Google Data Safety Form.

Mozilla’s grading for the top 20 paid Android apps on Google Play.

“Consumers care about privacy and want to make smart

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Android Apps

Mozilla states “most leading apps” on Android have misleading privateness labels

A man laughs at his smartphone while a cartoon characters peaks over his shoulder.
Enlarge / The minor Android robot is looking at almost everything you do.

It appears like trusting developers to just tell the truth about information selection on Google Participate in isn’t performing out. Just like on iOS, Android introduced application privacy “nutrition labels” in the Participate in Retail outlet final year, with the idea currently being that users could immediately get a look at how considerably information just about every application collects. The noticeable problem with this system is that the developers fill out the facts-assortment types, and there is certainly nothing at all to prevent them from lying or omitting certain facts-selection procedures. It is really no shock, then, that when Mozilla a short while ago audited the top applications on Google Perform, it discovered that “most best applications” have “phony or misleading” application privacy labels.

Mozilla states it surveyed 40 of the Participate in Store’s most well-known applications by worldwide downloads and uncovered that “in practically 80% of the apps we reviewed, we located some discrepancies in between the apps’ privateness procedures and the details they documented on Google’s Info Protection Variety.” Every app obtained a quality of “Poor,” “Needs Improvement,” or “OK,” with 16 out of 40 applications obtaining the most affordable score.

Mozilla did not will need to dig really deep to find flaws, saying that lots of apps’ privacy labels openly contradict their general public privateness guidelines. Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter all claim “No facts shared with third get-togethers” on the Participate in Store but depth third-social gathering sharing in their privateness insurance policies. For absolutely free apps, the checklist of recipients earning a “lousy” quality is not extremely surprising: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Lite, Snapchat, Twitter, and, the just one shock, Samsung Press Expert services. A large amount of paid out games like

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