Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Google: Do no evil (once you're caught)

(1/6) > >>

40hz:
Yet another jive move on the part of Google was reported in the February 17th edition of the Wall Street Journal. Since the WSJ doesn't allow quoting of their articles without permission you'll need to go here to read it.

Seems Google (and by extension it's advertisers) has been caught by a researcher over at Stanford using code that deliberately circumvents and overrides the privacy settings on iPhone's Safari browser in order to allow tracking of a user's browsing habits.



Cory Doctorow (he's on a roll this week) did an excellent article on this. Since BoingBoing does allow quoting their articles, here's an excerpt:

iPhone security, tracking users who opted out of third-party cookies

By Cory Doctorow at 7:13 am Friday, Feb 17

Google has been caught circumventing iOS's built-in anti-ad-tracking features in order to add Google Plus functionality within iPhone's Safari browser. The WSJ reports that Google overrode users' privacy settings in order to allow messages like "your friend Suzy +1'ed this ad about candy" to be relayed between Google's different domains, including google.com and doubleclick.net. This also meant that doubleclick.net was tracking every page you landed on with a Doubleclick ad, even if you'd opted out of its tracking.

I believe that Google has created an enormous internal urgency about Google Plus integration, and that this pressure is leading the company to take steps to integrate G+ at the expense of the quality of its other services. Consider the Focus on the User critique of Google's "social ranking" in search results, for example. In my own life, I've been immensely frustrated that my unpublished Gmail account (which I only use to anchor my Android Marketplace purchases for my phone and tablets, and to receive a daily schedule email while I'm travelling) has somehow become visible to G+ users, so that I get many, many G+ updates and invites to this theoretically private address, every day, despite never having opted into a directory and never having joined G+.

In the iPhone case, it's likely that Google has gone beyond lowering the quality of its service for its users and customers, and has now started to violate the law, and certainly to undermine the trust that the company depends on. This is much more invasive than the time Google accidentally captured some WiFi traffic and didn't do anything with it, much more invasive than Google taking pictures of publicly visible buildings -- both practices that drew enormous and enduring criticism at the expense of the company's global credibility. I wonder if this will cause the company to slow its full-court press to make G+ part of every corner of Google.
.
.
.
--- End quote ---

Read Cory's full article here

Innuendo:
For years people have been looking at me like I'm wearing a tin foil hat whenever I have stated we shouldn't blindly trust Google to always do the right thing.

Sweet vindication really does taste sweet. :)

40hz:

Sweet vindication really does taste sweet. :)
-Innuendo (February 19, 2012, 10:45 AM)
--- End quote ---

+1. But it's a very bitter-sweetness. I would rather I had been completely wrong about them. 

Hmm...maybe we need a tinfoil hat forum badge?

Let's ask Mouser!

@Mouser - can we get a member forum badge for 'skeptics and cynics without honor'? And let it be a tinfoil hat?
 ;D :Thmbsup:

wraith808:
OTFor years people have been looking at me like I'm wearing a tin foil hat whenever I have stated we shouldn't blindly trust Google to always do the right thing.
-Innuendo (February 19, 2012, 10:45 AM)
--- End quote ---

"Trust, but Verify."

Which is what many people don't do, but counter blind trust with calls that there *must* be something wrong... ;)

superboyac:

Sweet vindication really does taste sweet. :)
-Innuendo (February 19, 2012, 10:45 AM)
--- End quote ---

+1. But it's a very bitter-sweetness. I would rather I had been completely wrong about them. 

Hmm...maybe we need a tinfoil hat forum badge?

Let's ask Mouser!

@Mouser - can we get a member forum badge for 'skeptics and cynics without honor'? And let it be a tinfoil hat?
 ;D :Thmbsup:
-40hz (February 19, 2012, 01:03 PM)
--- End quote ---
:( And just yesterday I posted that I felt Google was still one of the good guys.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page