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Privacy Group Gives Google Lowest Possible Grade
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jun 10, 2007 04:14 PM
from the eff-triple-minus dept.
from the eff-triple-minus dept.
The Washington Post is reporting on a finding by London-based group Privacy International. In a new report, they find that Google has some of the worst privacy-protection practices anywhere on the web, giving them the lowest possible grade. "While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to 'achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,' Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings. In a statement from one of its lawyers, Google said it aggressively protects its users' privacy and stands behind its track record. In its most conspicuous defense of user privacy, Google last year successfully fought a U.S. Justice Department subpoena demanding to review millions of search requests."
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Privacy Group Gives Google Lowest Possible Grade
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Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Informative)
(http://reefs.org/)
Their report (interim rankings only) [privacyinternational.org]
Final rankings won't be available until September. Wonder what they'll be dicking around for three months for....
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Informative)
Privacy International responded via an open letter here. [privacyinternational.org]
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday September 30 2004, @01:33AM)
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there is one, albeit small, link to Microsoft. From the "About Privacy International" page, UK advisory board:
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Informative)
(http://home.eng.iastate.edu/~hawklan/)
Actually, if you look at the preliminary report, they seem to have done a pretty good job. For example, Google does not consider IP address as personal information. This is OK if you are conneccting from a local coffee shop, but sucks if you have a static IP, or even do DHCP over a small range of addresses. It also points out that they don't always consider privacy implications before releasing information such as Street-level view. With the amount of data that Google gathers, analyzes, utilizes and releases (both publicly and its corporate partners), these kind of actions are a bit disturbing.
I'm not trying to say this report is perfect, or that there is enough information provided to evaluate it independently. However, seeing a conspiracy targeted at Google because a group got upset about some of their practices, and decided to do a study (which included a lot more companies than just Google), is a bit premature.
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.nutters.org/user/famous | Last Journal: Saturday March 22 2003, @12:57PM)
And yet Gmail is the only public webmail service I know that does not include the IP address of the browser (HTTP client) in the mail header fields.
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.nutters.org/user/famous | Last Journal: Saturday March 22 2003, @12:57PM)
A suggestion... (Score:5, Insightful)
One solution to the privacy problem, in my oppinion, would be granting users, besides the ability of not surrendering more information than necessary for a given transaction, some effective way of deleting their personal data once done with Google, Yahoo, Amazon or whoever else.
The Future of Google: Total Surveillance (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Future of Google: Total Surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.keirstead.org/)
Your other choice is being able to delete your profile with a click.
People who think that the idea of being able to delete your profile is in any way simple or trivial are deluding themselves. Google themselves have said that because of the way GFS works they can *NEVER* know when a piece of data flagged for deletion is actually no longer recoverable. That fault tolerance and redundancy is built into the design.
It is the same thing at Yahoo and MSN. All these guys have redundant systems with backups. It would take days worth of man hours to delete a persons profile. Hard thing to demand from a free service.
If you don't want Google holding your data, no one is putting a bullet to your head. You don't need to have cookies enabled or anything else to use their search engine. Frankly I trust them with my email more than my ISP.
Re:You can't (Score:4, Insightful)
As proper deletion should have been
Not if the filesystem support and account management code had been properly written.
You obviously have no clue how a filesystem stack works. Data is rarely deleted per se on *any* filesystem, simply unlinked and possibly flagged for later overwriting. Why do you think projets like this [sourceforge.net] exist?
Even if a file (if an email or google doc is even stored in what one would *call* a file) did get deleted, the indexing that is done would make at least pieces parts recoverable until their staleness is discovered, which could be a while.
Even then, a good forensic analyist could probably recover something that had been allegedly deleted.
Overwriting data to securely erase it is expensive on a desktop and approaching impossible on a busy server. This is why people who don't wear tinfoil hats will use Boot'n'Nuke or somesuch before selling a hard drive on eBay. You can't just delete something (even on your own computer, mind you) and expect it to be gone. That's not the way filesystems work.
--------
Check your facts at the door; be sure to pay a quarter!
Re:A suggestion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://68.48.55.94:27015/)
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
Very funny. Statistical would imply they can't tie info back to you. When your mail, history, ip, browsing and search habits are all recorded in your exact account, it's not statistical. It's a disaster.
Google can pull all this crap out since they're so trusted by the large masses. Companies are pushed to behaving good by customers not trusting them. Google just didn't get enough of that throughout the years, and here's the result.
Funnier even, they seem to use their "goodness" as an argument here as well: the fact they fight back in court to protect that data isn't helpful. What would be helpful is that data is never collected in a way it can be abused, if god knows what happens (cracked server, loss in court, new law, insider leaking info etc etc)
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.myspace.com/ronpaul2008)
Hea, waat the hell, why not just pull random people over for.. no reason at all.. and take fingerprints. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6170070.stm [bbc.co.uk] Alread on it in the UK, the worlds leading police state.
Sound Orweallian..? guess what, it *looks* that way too. Check out the "it's for your 'safty'" ads. http://www.infowars.net/articles/april2006/170406
For the Tin Foil Hat Brigade (myself included) (Score:4, Informative)
Features:
* Remove click tracking
* Anonymize your Google userid
* Block Google Analytics cookies
* Secure Gmail and Google Calendar, switch to https
* Remove ads
Re:For the Tin Foil Hat Brigade (myself included) (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 22 2006, @10:27PM)
Toppling the Top Guy (Score:1, Interesting)
(http://www.timalmond.com/)
Look at how much scorn is pushed onto Starbucks, despite being quite decent to their suppliers, staff and the environment. If they were the 2nd biggest coffee shop chain in the world, the scorn would not exist.
So, Google, despite behaving a great deal better than Yahoo over privacy get nobbled.
Re:Toppling the Top Guy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Toppling the Top Guy (Score:5, Funny)
Amusing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose the lesson is that companies are never your friends, just allies of convenience at best. Something to remember the next time some slashbot claims comapny X will save the day because they are a friend of open source.
Re:Amusing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably BS (Score:1)
Google? Hardly... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
They've obviously never heard of LexisNexis [wikipedia.org] or Accurint [accurint.com]. Unless they consider information on what web page you visited to be more infringing than, say, your full financial history, residence, court records, marriage licenses, property deeds, loans, phone numbers (including unlisted), etc., etc. Of course, that's all "public information."
Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeaha. Google protects the data from the Justice Department.
But it DOESNT (and thats the point of the rating) protect the data from google itself. The google privacy idea is more or less "We are good. Thats why WE are allowed to do everything, and you WILL like it (trust us, we know you better than you do yourself)".
clusty (Score:1, Troll)
(http://www.lightandmatter.com/)
Abuse of "anonymity" (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.cgstock.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 11, @11:26AM)
I have been sued for defamation by a Russian businessman after I wrote a webpage that criticized him. One of my witnesses claimed the Russian threatened his life. A commment was later posted on my website using an anonymizing web proxy saying the businessman was in the Russian Mafia, and implying if I win in court I might loose my life.
I issued a federal subpoena for an IP trace to find out who made this threat. It went to Affinity Internet, who is the ISP for Unipeak, an anonymizing web proxy. I later learned Unipeak was the source of the comment threatening me, but Unipeak didn't have any valid contact information and their website says they keep no traffic logs.
Further research showed the Russian, Andrew Vilenchik, was a user of Unipeak. See Vilenchik's anonymous comments. [cgstock.com]
My local police are now involved, my neighbors keep an eye on my house, and my wife and extended family are very upset about this threat, which we take seriously.
Whoo hoo! Hooray for anonymity! By all means, terrorize, threaten, steal, and engage in represehsible and illegal conduct with anonymity and impunity. I choose not to lie, cheat, or steal, but I tell the truth without anonymity and I face any consequences. By comparison, every criminal and scumbag wants anonymity.
A full description of the Lawsuit is online [cgstock.com]
Re:Abuse of "anonymity" (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://homestarrunner.com/)
Finkployd
and, in related news, privacy international (Score:2, Funny)
How do we know Goog isn't giving up info already?? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course Google is awful for privacy! (Score:1)
This seems hilarious... (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday October 06 2006, @06:40PM)
Yes (Score:2)
I mean, they're Privacy International for cripe's sake. That's at least 20% better than just Privacy National. Just because I had never heard of them until today is irrelevant.
GMAIL (Score:1)
-Dee
There is a lot Google is (Score:5, Insightful)
However, most commercial activity and interesting behaviors, the ones worth money to advertisers and others, don't happen at the search screen. This is why Google has toolbar and desktop. They want to watch all of the sites you visit and what you do on the sites. Using this data they build a detailed behavioral profile of you. But they also have way more information then your commercial behaviors. They know about a wide variety of sites and can determine if you look at sites about health issues, or other sensitive and personal behaviors.
Google is a HUGE threat to your privacy. One could reasonably say that if you use many Google services and tools you have already given them such a detailed picture about you your privacy is essentially gone. And remember, they keep a 2 year rolling picture of the details about you. But they can also keep the "important" items they discover and toss the detail.
And, to those who say "Remember that Google went to Court to prevent the Government from getting records", remember what Google said. They said they were doing this NOT to protect your privacy, but to protect their trade secrets. That means so that no one can found out the real details about what they track and know about you.
Don't believe the "Do NO Evil" stuff. It is just clever marketing. They are a big company, just like all the rest and in many ways worse. Remember that they say that they want to index all of the World's information. That includes the very intimate and personal details about you!
Many viewed Google as the anti-Microsoft. Microsoft just dominated a market. Is is really debatable whether Microsoft's dominance actually cost consumers financially, but if they did, it was just money. There is no question that Google threatens at least our privac and that is just the first of our basic rights that their behavior and business interests threaten to erode.
Privacy International? (Score:1)
ooh i bet they're scared now... (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 26, @11:11PM)
WERNSTROM: I give you the worst grade imaginable, an A minus minus!
High Horses (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Sunday June 19 2005, @01:43PM)
P.I.'s report is a summary of accusations, pretty much all of which were raised by others well before they undertook this "study". It is not an empirical accounting of Google's policies or practices. They didn't examine these. They'd have had to do that from the inside. They made no effort to do so, as they had no intention of studying it objectively.
Note that this takes no stand on the reality of Google's policies and practices. I don't know what they really are from the inside any more than P.I. This is simply an observation and comparison of self-styled "watchdog" groups whose intent too often is more self-promotion than watchdogging.
googleisevil (Score:1)
Marketing and Privacy are diametrically opposed (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
A matter of interpretation. (Score:1)
(http://www.etnu.org/)
Bullshit (Score:2)
Seriously though, with a new "Thousands of credit card/social security numbers released by company XYZ" story every other week, how did Google score this low? Seems to me there's more at play here than facts and studies. Perhaps Google indexed one of their "confidential" pages they put on their server and didn't realize was on the Internet until Google indexed it.
News at 11 (Score:2, Funny)
Its interesting... (Score:1)
Wake me up when Google does something like this, until then its all BS.
Whatever... (Score:1)
(http://www.somethingpositive.net/ | Last Journal: Monday November 24 2003, @01:20PM)
Consistency & Reliability? (Score:2)
(http://www.cheapcheap.biz/)
In reading the actual findings [privacyinternational.org], I'm a little confused. They fault one company for using "web beacons" and another for using "pixel tags" -- but those are the same thing, so why not be consistent in terminology? They fault Apple because it "kept quiet on the potential watermarking of DRM-free iTunes songs" when this topic only broke out within the last week, and there is zero evidence of actual watermarking (versus plain text additions of your name and email address -- yes, there is a difference). They fault AOL for preventing Mac users from viewing videos, but that's hardly a privacy concern (hello, competing video formats!). For Google, "Privacy mandate is not embedded throughout the company," whatever THAT means. Finally, a majority of the listed sites have no information listed in the categories of "responsiveness", "ethical compass", and "corporate leadership" -- so how can you adequately compare them to the bigger sites who have such information?
how to find these (Score:1)
a look at the Wash. Post's board of Directors (Score:1)