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Who ISN'T watching and recording our online activities these days?
Just operate from the assumption that everything you type is being displayed on a police/government official's computer.
Who ISN'T watching and recording our online activities these days?
Just operate from the assumption that everything you type is being displayed on a police/government official's computer.
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@roothorick: As long as their customers' interests include having targeted advertisements presented to them, I would have to agree that Google has their customers' interests in mind.
If you use Firefox you can anonymize your Google, MSN, AOL,and Yahoo! searches on a regular basis using TrackMeNot (http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/). The AddOn sends out random searches at a time interval you specify. The theory being that your real searches will be obfuscated within the random searches the plugin generates.
Roothorick, Google's \"customers\" are it's advertisers who keep them fat and happy with giant piles o' money -- not you, who don't pay them a dime to use all of their \"free\" services.
If you're comfortable having a multi-billion dollar corporation store that much personal information on you and having no say whatsoever in whom they sell it to or what they do with it, that's your prerogative. Other people may not be so sanguine.
Collection of data by itself isn't the issue. It's how certain third parties - employers, political opponents, personal enemies, terrorists, etc. - could use or misuse it that rightly raises eyebrows.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-16563-100x100.png\")
On the plus side, Google is the only company on the planet that told the US government to f*ck themselves when they tried getting years of search data on the sly, forcing them to back down and publicizing it (thanks, Yahoo, MSN!).
On the debit: 18 freaken months is a compromise?!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-10572-100x100.png\")
No one should be keeping any records about me without my permission. Hence, I don't use Google. Ever. If I do, it's a complete accident and I curse.
syn:
So you don't use search engines, ever? Cuz you know they all track requests, right? They can't do their job otherwise. (it's how LONG they retain that's the issue). Of the Big Three, Google's stuck it to The Man the hardest...
Sugarcoated:
While I agree with you that privacy is an issue to some, I believe the problem lies in the way the data is being handled, not data being collected per se. Most of the data being collected by google are useful in the sense they can be analyzed and be used to improve their services.
If that's not something you can accept, then the policy dictates you not to used their services. End of story.
@ trai_dep:
This is inaccurate:
\"On the plus side, Google is the only company on the planet that told the US government to f*ck themselves when they tried getting years of search data on the sly, forcing them to back down and publicizing it (thanks, Yahoo, MSN!).\"
Nuh-uh, that's all wrong. Google couldn't have cared less about turning over the search data, but they claimed doing so would reveal their \"trade secrets.\" They are protected by law from compromising any such secrets. The gov't would have gotten the search data if Google hadn't got off on that technicality.
That Google \"saved\" it's users or \"fought for them\" is untruthful. They only sought to protect themselves.
\"On the debit: 18 freaken months is a compromise?!\"
Indeed. 18 *hours* is still 17 hours and 59 minutes too long for me.
What no one has found the answer to yet is why they need to tie search data to individuals at all. Of course they need search data for improving their service, but otherwise, why tie it to profiles?
humm... who cares? any damage that would be done, would've been done by then. That gives whoever, where ever they may be, 18 months to copy the entire database and call it their own. Thanks Google! ;)
well ive come to the point that SOMEONE is at least to some degree paying attention to everything everybody is doing. i geuss i'll blindly trust google over someone else. i'll live.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-6536-100x100.png\")
Personally, I'm more comfortable handing my information over to Google knowing that they're not going to be just giving it away to outside parties, and that they truly do have their customers' interests in mind, unlike certain other companies. While the situation could be better, I'm not really complaining.