Google Defends Privacy Policies 114
adeelarshad82 writes "Google responded to a letter from 10 international privacy commissioners who criticized the company's approach to privacy, insisting that Google protects its customers and has moved quickly to make changes regarding Google Buzz. In a letter to the commissioners, global privacy counsels for Google stated, 'We are committed to being transparent with our users about the information that we collect when they use our products and services, why we collect it, and how we use it to improve their experience.' The April inquiry from the officials included privacy commissioners from Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK."
Re:Facebook? Bueller? (Score:5, Informative)
Right now I'd say I'm more worried about what the government or my ISP will do with my private information than I am by what Google will do with it.
Remember, kids: Any information that Google has about you is only a subpoena or warrant away from being in the hands of a third party. So don't forget to toss your cookies, wash your cache, and renew your IP.
Re:better solutions? (Score:2, Informative)
- gives just as good of results as google
- has a history of protecting privacy (google resisted a court order from the government as much as they could. other search engines happily complied)
http://ixquick.com/ [ixquick.com]
I've been using them for years, and it's continually improved. I replaced the default search engine in Firefox with Ixquick HTTPS search. My searches are sent via POST and travel over HTTPS. My IP is *never* recorded.
The results that Ixquick gives me are very good. Occassionally, I'll use something different like Yahoo, but that is very infrequent. They also offer a proxy service, though I haven't used it.
Re:ORLY? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. It's too bad they don't have easy to follow instructions [google.com] on how to disable that.
The phrase "disable tracking from google" gave me the referenced link as first result.
I tried a bing search and not until the 5th result did I even get an official msn link (and that link seems to have nothing to do with my query.) The other official microsoft link was for a pdf file. No other results on that page nor the next (it defaults to 10 results per page.)
Re:Facebook? Bueller? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:better solutions? (Score:3, Informative)
Then...
1) Don't login while searching.
2) Clear your flash cookies.
3) If you logged in while searching, regularly clear your search history from the Google control panel. It will still be retained for several months, but probably won't be actively used to serve you anything. Just passively used for larger scale statistics.
Note: You will still be tracked. For more info, read on: http://www.ghostery.com/ [ghostery.com]
P.S. I respect Google for being so truthful about how things are.
Re:better solutions? (Score:2, Informative)
http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html [duckduckgo.com]
They don't keep search logs. I am not connected in any way other than occasionally using it.