Anti-Google Video Runs In Times Square 346
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Consumer Watchdog is running a 540-square-foot video billboard advertisement in Times Square, New York that shows Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an ingratiating ice cream truck driver who knows everything about everyone and happily offers free ice cream in exchange for full body scans. The group says its goal is to push Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track Me list, similar to the Do Not Call list developed to prevent telemarketers from aggressively calling consumers. 'Do you want Google or any other online company looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move online just so it can increase its profits?' writes the group's president, Jamie Curtis, at the group's web site. 'Consumers have a right to privacy. They should control how their information is gathered and what it is used for.' The FTC's consumer affairs group had no comment on whether the agency is considering creating a Do Not Track Me list."
Free ice cream (Score:2, Insightful)
So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll have to be sure to remember who I am wherever I go, right? That way they can be sure they aren't, for example, mistaking me for J. Random Trackable guy?
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:5, Insightful)
Tracking should be opt-out by default.
If I wanted to be tracked, I'll make an account on your website.
Re:Free ice cream (Score:3, Insightful)
Credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:1, Insightful)
by stating that you don't want to be tracked, you make yourself MORE identifiable.
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:5, Insightful)
The FTC may ask everything they want, but the internet is not limited to the USA. Once again, they fail to understand the scope of what they're asking.
The FTC should instead recommend a technical solution about disabling cookies, going through proxies, etc.
The real question is: how much disabling and routing would it take to be 100% anonymous, at least as far as websites/marketing is concerned?
Do not track me list (Score:2, Insightful)
What about credit cards, and the WWW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People have all the privacy they want: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
"Does Google 'track you' any more than a telco does?"
Last I heard your telco wasn't using the _content_ of your communications to choose which ads to serve you. I'm a total privacy zealot, and despite following all the news, was really rather surprised just this past week to see a news article say that gmail actually scrapes the content of your mail for targetted advertising. I myself find that beyond creepy in and of itself, let alone the more disturbing (though fundamentally no different) situation of a telco selling the words of a private conversation to advertisers in order for them to better psychologically profile you and thus serve you a more persuasive advertisement.
Of course, we all know that becoming a telco is every companies wet dream, especially Google's.
Who sponsors this? (Score:4, Insightful)
No doubt, from a hostile company. But who? Microsoft? Apple? Viacom?
Re:People have all the privacy they want: (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Analytics means that you can be visiting any of an ever increasing range of sites with no visible affiliation to Google, but still be being tracked by them.
So? Can I demand that the shopkeeper turn off the CCTV before I enter the store? Try buying gas without ending up being recorded on tape somehow.
If someone is that paranoid about being tracked, turn off the damned cookies in your browser. If you're super-duper paranoid, get off the internet - no-one is forcing you to browse.
Re:Gmail (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What about credit ratings? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the terms are probably written into the credit card agreements that no one reads when they open up the "pre approved for xxxxx" letters they get in the mail and go "wow, now i can get a new TV!"
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:1, Insightful)
If the default behavior is to track everyone
Then you change it so that's NOT your default behavior. Wow, what a mind-blowing thing, right?
Yes, it is quite mind-blowing, they're not going to stop tracking 100% of people because 10% of people care.
You realise that they make money from tracking people so will do it to the extent allowed by law, right?
Re:Not new (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I think Google has every right to do whatever they want on their servers. There are lots of legal precedents regarding how an employee has no 'reasonable expectation of privacy' when they are using a work PC, bandwidth, etc for personal surfing or email. Their employer has every right to monitor and record (including keystrokes) everything they do. Why would Google be any different? If you don't want your activity and personal emails scraped by Google, don't use Google. Or at the very least sign out of Google before you go to www.hotunderagehorserape.com (god I hope that's not a real site).
Re:Do not track me list (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh, +1 insightful.
Well, it'll end up like Saudi Arabia and India... the government is just going to have to get full access to all of Google's and everyone else's information. That way, they can, uh, stay wary of whether anyone is collecting too much!
But personally, I'm more worried about the nosy old lady with binoculars across the street than Google (or hackers that happen to break into my Google account). On the other hand, I'm fairly careful/cognizant about what information I make available about myself in the first place.
Re:Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree on the creepy part, but that's a matter of opinion and we're all entitled to feel about Google as we do.
You bring up a key thing about privacy that bothered me in this anti-Google propaganda: when the Schmidt caricature started revealing personal information about people to others in a way that was obviously harmful. Google has never proven to do serious harm even in an unintentional way, let alone as maliciously as portrayed.
It's one thing to use collected information from you to display things on your own email screen. It's another to sell information about your interests to a third party and that's hardly a new practice, even if Google participates in this (which I've never heard of as far as Gmail is concerned). It's an altogether together a different thing to datamine embarrassing information about you and offer to sell that information to those you don't want knowing such things, which is simply the worst kind of fabricated hyperbole.
Schmidt is criticized for having talked about the problem of people posting information they may not have wanted to later on, as if it's his fault for running a company who made it easy to discover such oversharing. But can I complain when sending an unencrypted email with baby pictures to my mother who lives halfway around the world, that Google switches my advertising from mountain biking to diapers as fair compensation for an email service I would use before any other? I can't do that in good conscience. It may not be something I appreciate if I'd rather keep getting the biking info, but I can't really call that creepy.
Maybe it's simply a matter of trust I have that no humans are bothering to look at pictures of just one more baby, which others do not share. Maybe I don't actually do anything I shouldn't be doing, as Schmidt said, or anything I'm ashamed of and don't want told about to my face. I've never heard an actual reason for why people think it's "creepy" and bothers them. If someone can elaborate, I'd like to see what you have to say.
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is people have no idea what those agreements mean.
Which is the entire problem. I consider myself relatively well educated, relatively intelligent, relatively knowledgeable about IT, and relatively knowledgeable about law. I never read EULAs because doing so would take way, way too long. The amount of man hours used if everyone read and understood every EULA or legal agreement they clicked would result in the crippling of the economy, and the free time of the populace being reduced drastically. EULAs and legal agreements aimed at those who don't understand them are shit, and there needs to be _massive_ simplification.
Re:CAN WE FINALLY GET A NEW GOOGLE ICON? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm. Let's see:
Want to get that free body scan for a little ice cream, little girl
compared to:
You will be assimilated.
Then there's the
What, you're going to jailbreak your phone?!? Death to the Android apostates!
Or better still
Forget that huge freaking yacht I own, I'm suing you cause you stepped on my patents!
And there are so many more.....
I know I'm going to sound like a troll here... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but the internet ceased a looooong time ago to be the wild and secretive jungle that we all remember and loved, and it's now a commercial enterprise. Period. I don't understand how people can get so outraged over Google's data-mining without starting long before that. Google, as evil as people think they might be, track *who you say you are*. Of a handful of Gmail accounts that I have, exactly one of them has any information at all that could be traced directly to me. The rest are throwaway accounts, as are my six or seven yahoo accounts, and I don't think I have a single other account anywhere in my own name other than Facebook. When my identity got stolen, computers had nothing to do with it. They either stole my mail or my trash, not my Gmail password. Why do people freak out so much about Google using keyword-targeted advertising that's completely run by a machine that cares not a whit who you are and spends its day searching for "hdtv" or "tentacle porn", but these same people have no problem whatsoever giving their name, address, phone number, credit card number, bank routing information, and direct access to every single byte that comes out of their computer to the phone companies that have proved over and over and *%&$ing over again that they simply DO NOT CARE about their customers and look at them as nothing more than money troughs? (Seriously? $.30 for a text message, but a 650K jpg is free? *^&$ you.) Where's the similar outrage at the telcos, who are less progressive than the MPAA and will roll over for a warrantless wiretap like a wiener dog with an itchy belly? Seriously. Did I miss something?
Re:So in order to Not Track Me properly (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank God that Sony/BMG isn't an advertiser.
Re:Consumer Watchdog = troll sponsored by Microsof (Score:1, Insightful)
Indeed - the whole video stank, it wasn't pro-consumer, just blatantly anti-Google to the point of absurdity, so I assumed something was up. It took me about 3 minutes to find precisely the same research. Why this article wasn't titled "Microsoft begins a fourth front against Google using yet another proxy" is beyond me. Google angered Ballmer, and now they must reap the chairstorm. The mind boggles as to just how above the legal system Microsoft is.
Google is evil but Facebook is not? (Score:2, Insightful)
But how about then Facebook what knows exactly who are your friends, with who you chat and meet. Where you go, what music you listen, what movies you like, your ex's situations, your holidays places, your addresses, your workplace, even many gives their social security numbers and so on.
When it comes to Google, they can see everything what you ISP (= Government and the ISP as a company) can see, as well what you are doing in facebook.
But when it comes to real privacy, Facebook is bigger threat than Google. As Google does not know for who are your friends unless you use Google email services and you use them to contact your friends.
With all the social semantiks what facebook has, you can build so awesome anti-terrorists filtering and security system as you can just find everything from every facebook person.
Re:*cough* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:CAN WE FINALLY GET A NEW GOOGLE ICON? (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is far move invasive than Microsoft...
Apparently you never heard of Microsoft's Hidden Files [archive.org]
SUMMARY:
Discuss this article with the author, and with other readers, in the Hidden Files discussion area of our forums!
There are folders on your computer that Microsoft has tried hard to keep secret. Within these folders you will find two major things: Microsoft Internet Explorer has not been clearing your browsing history after you have instructed it to do so, and Microsoft's Outlook Express has not been deleting your e-mail correspondence after you've erased them from your Deleted Items bin. (This also includes all incoming and outgoing file attachments.) And believe me, that's not even the half of it.
When I say these files are hidden well, I really mean it. If you don't have any knowledge of DOS then don't plan on finding these files on your own. I say this because these files/folders won't be displayed in Windows Explorer at all -- only DOS. (Even after you have enabled Windows Explorer to "show all files.") And to top it off, the only way to find them in DOS is if you knew the exact location of them. Basically, what I'm saying is if you didn't know the files existed then the chances of you running across them is slim to slimmer.
You object to Google taking a picture of your house that ANYONE walking by could take, or of making a note of any wireless nearby, which can also be done by anyone from public property. Windows doesn't "phone home" on a regular basis for nothing. While the info in the URL is ancient history Microsoft hasn't quit, they just gotten more sophisticated. Windows generates a GUID based on 10 components of your hardware that Windows is running on. EVERY document you send out has your GUId embedded in it. Every online transaction includes your GUID, regardless of whether you identified yourself or not. Microsoft takes the GUID from your Amazon credit card transaction and matches your name and address with the GUID you left when you posted an anonymous message or downloaded a file.
And you think Google is being invasive for putting up Google Earth, or Street View. Get real. This current anti-Google campaign has all the stink of one of Microsoft's dirty tricks combined with their classic "astroturfing".
In fact, you could be one of James Plamondon's "Technical Evangelists".