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"The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"
kartal:
Total Information Awareness: The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows About You
April 9, 2010 |
In June 2007, Privacy International, a U.K.-based privacy rights watch- dog, cited Google as the worst privacy offender among 23 online companies, ranking the “Don’t Be Evil” people below Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, eBay, LinkedIn, Facebook and AOL. According to the report, no other company was “coming close to achieving [Google’s] status as an endemic threat to privacy.” What most disturbed the authors was Google’s “increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user’s life and lifestyle choices.” The result: “the most onerous privacy environment on the Internet.”
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http://www.alternet.org/media/146398/total_information_awareness:_the_more_you_use_google,_the_more_google_knows_about_you_
zridling:
So the answer is, stop using Google? If so, you're cutting yourself off from a lot of the web. And contrary to the article, Google does not own your content. Point is, if your current computing consists of interacting with a big corporation, you're pretty much screwed. Lots of "could be's" and "cans" in the article. Yet it's still a fair treatment by the author. Trust no one.
Innuendo:
So the answer is, stop using Google?-zridling (April 09, 2010, 10:26 PM)
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I think the answer is don't blindly use Google without taking precautions. Depending on how private a person you are a few simple steps could improve your level of privacy when it comes to Google.
1. Delete Google's cookies on your computer regularly.
2. Minimize your activity on Google's sites while logged in to GMail & other Google services.
3. Use something like the TACO or Ghostery Firefox extensions to block GoogleAnalytics.
4. If Google's search engine is all you use then consider using Scroogle instead.
You don't have to cut yourself off from the web. You just need to practice a little diligence just like when visiting any internet site. And no, Google does not own your content. However, they catalog & digest it all. Don't let Gramma send you her top secret chocolate chip cookie recipe through GMail. ;)
JavaJones:
The thing about being online is generally speaking *someone* is going to know about you. If you use a different search engine to avoid Google tracking, then Bing/Yahoo or someone else will know about you instead. And quite frankly I'd rather Google have that info than Microsoft. They've proven over 10 years to be a lot more friendly to my personal philosophies than MS or many other big companies.
I think there are two legitimate concerns here. 1: consolidation of lots of informatio in one place. Yes, this is a *potential* problem - the question is how the information is used. Google seems to be one of the more reasonable in this regard, never spamming me, never (so far) selling my info to other companies in a way that identifies me, basically I'm never affected *negatively* by how Google uses my info. That leads to point 2, which is even though Google (IMHO) doesn't abuse its information now, there is always the possibility in the future that it will, or (perhaps more likely) that it will fall on hard times (maybe due to a coming advertising crash?) and then will sell more identifiable data to stay affloat. I don't consider this scenario to be extremely likely, but it is a legitimate concern.
The thing is, when *I* think about any of these possibilities, well it just doesn't concern me much. I guess maybe I don't have a lot to hide, but that's not reason enough alone not to be worried, of course. I just look at Google's business history, and at the general Internet environment, and I feel that *if* I choose to participate in the Internet at all, short of being a chronic "Anonymous Coward" (Slashdot :D), I really have little choice but to let people know a bit about me, what I do, where I go. And you know what? I think it's a reasonable trade-off for what I get in return, especially when the company in question is - so far - pretty surprisingly "good".
- Oshyan
kartal:
So the answer is, stop using Google? If so, you're cutting yourself off from a lot of the web. And contrary to the article, Google does not own your content. Point is, if your current computing consists of interacting with a big corporation, you're pretty much screwed. Lots of "could be's" and "cans" in the article. Yet it's still a fair treatment by the author. Trust no one.
-zridling (April 09, 2010, 10:26 PM)
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It is about awareness and being smart about your choices. Many people are not ready to understand the complications of such concentration of data at this point. Most would regard this concerns as ungrounded, what is ungrounded is their lack of proper understanding of how this all works. That is why it is always a good thing to read different points of views and have educated ideas about what is going on.
Google or not Google, I do not give a damn. I can live without Google or Internet but Google cannot live without users and Internet and this should be an empowering point for the consumers of the online existence.
I personally do not use anything google. Only time I need Google is when I need to dig through couple technical groups on Google groups and that is not something they have built themselves! As usual they have bought it and claim ownership as in Dejanews, which is generally what I need from Google. Even so it is not a big deal I can always find an answer to my technical research somewhere else.
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