Privacy Concerns Over Google On the Rise In Germany 63
An anonymous reader writes "After protests from several sources, major German news site Spiegel Online has dropped Google Analytics. 'Google gathers so much detailed information about its users that one critic says some state intelligence bureaus look "like child protection services" in comparison,' they say. Spiegel Online no longer uses Google Analytics. 'We want to ensure that data on our users' browsing patterns don't leave our site,' says Wolfgang Büchner, one of Spiegel Online's two chief editors." The article covers a wide swath of German concern over Google's data-collecting and -handling policies, including a local rebellion against Google's Street View survey vehicles that threatens to go national.
Re:Forbidden (Score:1, Interesting)
Austria and Germany can forbid whatever they like, and Google will do what the hell they want, and will do it because they CAN. After all, most sites are hosted in the US over lines that go to the US and primarily run in the US. This is apparently transparent to most users who never realize while hackin away at their terminals in Trier, Deutschland, that their favorite site is actually maybe in Joplin, Missouri, USA. Google Analytics does not use only 'cookies'. It also seeks to take over al the browsers it encounters by causing the target browsers to treat it as a 'trusted site'. This allows Google complete administrative access to the target machines, just like a virus. Windows' IE is bread on the window, available anytime! IE users are never notified that Google Analytics is requesting 'trusted access' to their computers. Likewise for Firefox. The only browser that correctly catches Google Analytics in the act of criminal privacy invasion is Mozilla's old suite and some older versions of Sea Monkey. New stuff from all of them have bought Google/People's Republik of China Military Intelligence Service has all been bought or threatened off. Mozilla and early sea monkey flag the attacks of the Google Chinese spy worm and bring it to the notice of the computer owner along with a decision choice, allow or reject. The way Mozilla/sea monkey choose to do it is defective in a way though, as the request can and is often brought up again and again, just like cookie requests in old IE browsers until the computer owner either makes a fatal typo and allows the poison in, accepts the fatal invader willingly out of fatigue or foolishness, or dumps the browser by quitting the program one way or another. I say fatal typo or fatal acceptance because that is what it is. Once you accept Google Analytics as a trusted site, you cannot later retract your stupid act. The only way to restore your system then is to take your hard drive and reformat it, then shred it, then take it to a car wreckin yard and have it picked up by one of the crane operated electromagnets used to pick up wrecks and drop them in the compactor, then low level format it, then shred it again thirty six times...you get the drift......take it to the nearest freeway in New York City and put it under a large re-election picture of George Bush and leave it there.
Difference in attitude between USA and Europe? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess that's one of the big differences between European and USAian attitudes. Here in the USA we treat governments with the same level of mistrust (and, in the case of some agencies, a higher level of mistrust) than corporations. In Europe, it almost seems to be the reverse.