Privacy Group Gives Google Lowest Possible Grade 260
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."
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.
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:The Future of Google: Total Surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Toppling the Top Guy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amusing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Google? Hardly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)".
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.
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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:Abuse of "anonymity" (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously this is the most extreme example (and fortunately I don't live in a country in which I fear my government), but it's a damn good reason.
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:1, Insightful)
This seems hilarious... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can't (Score:3, Insightful)
Bear in mind that if they offsite any tape backups, for them legally to have deleted your profile they'll have had to track down every single tape with your data on it and erase your data from that tape without disturbing the other contents of the tape. Similar story for any other sort of redundancy/replication/backup. If they don't do this, they still have your data. It's not as simple as an 'rm' command at a shell.
Any large company that runs a datacentre has a really fecking expensive time actually removing a specific piece of data from it's premises. And because no company is 100% efficient with it's documentation, it can never be 100% sure that it's actually gone when it thinks it is.
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.
Re:This seems hilarious... (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing and Privacy are diametrically opposed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You can't (Score:2, Insightful)
Why don't they do this? Because no one who uses their services really cares.
Re:The Future of Google: Total Surveillance (Score:3, Insightful)
Well duhhhhhhhhh.
Google have been honest and upfront with all this information that they store. Thats why people know about it. If you don't like that, then don't use their services. You don't like the fact that they store your searches, then use another search engine. Don't like that they index your email? Use something else.
I have no sympathy for the people who jump up and down about this stuff. You choose to have these details stored by using Googles services. If you don't like it, don't use it. It's not that hard.
Re:Pot calls kettle black. (Score:2, Insightful)
If that's what you think, you, sir, are an ignorant.
Well, ignoring the fact that it is not a complete sentence, I am not ignorant. But I have an opinion which differs from yours. If you cannot accept that some people might not agree with you then there is little point in you taking part in discussions. This forum is not the place for any particular group of people to enforce their views on everyone else, but to discuss and question various items of common interest to learn from each other and to share information. Of course, you view of what this forum is for might also explain why you post AC - but perhaps you have a good reason for hiding behind that title.
If I am in a public place, then any number of people can see me. Whether they use their eyes, a video camera, a pair of binoculars or whatever does not change the amount of 'surveillance' that I am under. Thus, in my opinion, it does not affect my privacy one jot.
However, you make the point regarding the 'correlation' of data: this is precisely the point that the study was making about Google. They are amassing a huge amount of data which, under European law, is more than is justified for the purpose of delivering data as a result of a user search. Of course, you will argue that they can process the data to improve the service and to better target their audience with more appropriate advertising. Under EU law this could easily be illegal. If you have read my post in full, which I will assume you have, the EU data protection laws also dictate how data can be aggregated, and what the aggregated data can be used for. This in part, I suspect, is what is causing the concern in the study.
The cameras CANNOT track anybody. In each of the places that a camera is fitted there is a high probability that, at any given time, someone other than myself will be present. I never had privacy in that place and I haven't lost it now. The most that can be done is that a human being sits down and looks at each video tape and thus pieces together a specific person's movements. It is not done for everybody, nor even a large minority but for specific people who are currently the target of police interest. All the camera has provided is persistence of data so that the information that is contained on the video tape can be used once the police _know_ that a crime needs to be investigated. The analysis of tapes takes many thousands of hours, evidenced by recent police investigations into terrorist bombers. It is not a task that the police, or anyone else, undertakes without reason because it is prohibitively expensive in terms of manpower, time and equipment.
In the US, where much of the criticism of the UK camera system originates, people are under a similar level of 'surveillance' by the aggregation of credit card data, form-filling, ISP logging and numerous other physical and electronic means. However, in the UK the surveillance is subject to specific laws with much stricter laws on how the surveillance data can be collected, stored, collated and subsequently used. I have no objection to the police force protecting me while I am in public, in fact it is what I pay my taxes for. I am content that they are using cost-effective methods of enforcing the law even if, unfortunately, camera information is used more in the detection rather than prevention of crime. I would object most strongly if their surveillance reached into my private life unless they had a damn good reason and had been granted the authority to carry out the surveillance under the relevant judicial process. In the US, it seems to me that every business believes that it has the right to collect and collate data - 'to improve the service' or to maximise its profits - and such action is NOT permitted under European Law, unless the collection and collation has been registered and given approval. Such data is then subject to periodic scrutiny at the whim of the appropriate authorities.
As another poster has already pointed out, the camera
Re:The Future of Google: Total Surveillance (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, the guy was surprised.
You can't blame him for that. Let's face it, none of his other plans have been successful.
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter (Score:3, Insightful)