Ah to be young, talented and more than a little Type-A. When McKayla Maroney took home a silver medal in the vault, she was not impressed. Her podium pout proved it.
Now her famous scowl has earned her Internet darling status, inspiring the meme “McKayla is not impressed.” The site features Maroney’s smirk photoshopped onto images of famous places and moments in history. Rainbows? McKayla is not impressed. In fact, she’s not impressed with a lot of things, including the Sistine Chapel, NBC and Van Gogh’s Starry Night. This Olympian has high standards, as she should, and we imagine she would be equally unimpressed with the biggest privacy violators in the 2012 (In)Security Games. Without further ado, here they are:
Gold: Facebook
Facebook wins the gold this year for consistent and blatant privacy offenses. It's taken a toll with users, too. The company’s privacy policies are less trusted than Google’s and Amazon’s, according to a Harris Interactive Poll.
Silver: Google
Google gave Facebook a run for the gold this year. The Federal Trade Commission slapped the search engine giant with a $22.5 million fine for bypassing privacy settings of customers using the Apple Safari browser, according to Reuters.
Bronze: Mobile App Developers
Popular iPhone and Android apps such as Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram routinely take personal information from users’ address books—without the users’ knowledge. Apparently this is considered a best practice among app developers, much to our chagrin. The Future of Privacy Forum encouraged developers to notify users beforehand and get their permission before transmitting the information. We agree. Until then, the app guys are earning their bad rap. Stay tuned for our final installment of the 2012 (In)Security Olympics.
