This is ridiculous. Google didn’t change one word of their privacy policy. They just made it a Google-wide policy instead of individual policies for Google, YouTube, Blogger, etc.
So every piece of information you had before that was stored with Google, YouTube, Blogger, etc is still stored with them, except now, the heading at the top of the page will always say “Google” instead of Google, YouTube, Blogger, etc.
Secondly, if you don’t want Google tracking your searches, don’t keep yourself logged in! Jesus, I have never seen such a pearl clutching over something that was so insignificant.
The let me use small words: There are people that do things at work that cannot and should not be lumped into the same basket as their non-work stuff.
If you don’t understand that, and think it’s no big deal, bully for you. Other people come from different walks of life and have different criteria for what is acceptable from a privacy standpoint.
Have you ever held a security clearance? That’s pretty well predicated upon the ability to keep secrets. When the comment comes out that “Google will build a profile based on your personal and business lives”…they either need to rapidly clarify that, or kiss that security clearance good bye.
My job is security. My job is to look at things and judge them by order of severity. On one hand I see these statements from Google, and on the other, I see my local government leaping on the “Cloud first” bandwagon, and with no further clarification, I see Bad Things Happening. It will be hard to meet auditing requirements for things like HIPAA, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS with that mingling of data.
Only if you let them. If you’re not logged in to Google when you do your Google searches in your business life, this information will not be retained and will not be combined with the information from personal life (provided you remain logged in to Google then).
The way some people are reacting to this, you’d think Sergey Brin and Larry Page personally came into their houses, held a gun to their heads, and made them search for something utterly depraved like “necrophiliac bestiality child rape circumcision kittens” or something.
Well, I guess I can’t blame you for over hyperbolizing. Reading the ars article shines quite a bit more light on the subject. (particularly the comments)
The real question is, what do you think will happen due to Google’s “new” privacy policy. How does this change anything since Google isn’t storing any information they weren’t already storing? And that they still have no plans to share it with anybody short of a court order.
The issue was the mingling of personal and professional content. I’ve said that repeatedly. I’ve now seen that that won’t happen.
I’ve said it before (just not here), I think the cloud is where EVERYTHING will be in 10 years…secure data there will be handled perfectly fine…in the future. But right now, we’re dealing with the unintended consequences of building a mingled, fully connected…thing.
The whole iPhone tracking and CarrierIQ blowups are cut from the same cloth.
The articles I’ve read initially ARE over-reacting. It sounds like Google (and Privacy First model Citizen Facebook) are pushing things forward. But it doesn’t hurt to discuss the issues, does it?
I’d like to know the relative ages of those taking pro- and anti-privacy positions.
I’m an old-timer myself and felt a strange loss of freedom when I started carrying a cell phone: Before, when I was on my own, I was on my own! Younger people don’t know what I’m talking about. Indeed, some, I guess, know just where all their friends are at all times. Setting aside Google, the connectivity brought by cell phones and Internet sure seem historic and perhaps “inflectional” to me. (In one incident I powered on my cell phone – probably just to find out the time as I don’t carry a watch – and thus sent an unwanted “This number is now available” message.)
But Google’s policies matter little to me because the lives of retired septimus and my family are too straightforward and tame for privacy to be necessary at present. I don’t know where my kids will be a decade or two from now, and sometimes caution them from putting info at Facebook … but they don’t know what I’m talking about.
The permanence of Internet info should seem frightening. Septimus is not my real name; I use it so I can feel free to tell interesting stories about people (also with fake names) with little worry that on some future date, someone’s grandchild will develop a grudge against my yet-unborn grandchild about a long-ago event.
The anonymous nature of created user names lends us all a bit of privacy.
But, given IP tracking, Google Analytics already know pretty much where I am right now.
I may not be able to decypher who ‘septimus’ is, but given a bit of work, the people behind that tracking can and most probably will.
The question here is why anyone would want to.
I can imagine a bunch of court challenges if any governmental agency tries to use this information.
And yes, as an older guy, my cell phone is an invasion of my privacy, especially since I have a Google phone.
But, as my Dad once said, “them’s the lumps”.
<sigh>
By the nature of my job, I am admittedly far from center on this topic. The lesson I’m trying to teach my kids, as they take their first tentative steps online is: You can’t leak a picture than isn’t taken.
I spent the first 10 years of my job trying to cull down the devices I carried from a Business pager, Personal Cellphone, PDA, and some kind of music player to the Utopia of the first smartphone that really got everything right (iPhone)…and I’ve found that now that I carry an iPhone AND a business Blackberry, it’s close to perfect. Because I can leave the Blackberry behind. I’m all for occasionally being reached before and after hours, but to be reachable 7x24x365…man, I don’t get paid enough for that.
The Google announcement kinda rubbed me the wrong way as I just got done with an IRS audit at the office. They provide sensitive information that’s VERY important to our day-to-day operations. And for that, they have VERY stringent requirements on how that data is treated (rightfully so). I saw the incomplete announcment from Google and saw one GREAT BIG HEADACHE trying to prove to the IRS that my Department, when it reaches a Google managed cloud, is indeed doing the right things.
Aside from Facebook, there are almost no sites that link your profile with your real name unless you let them. And even Facebook is crawling with dozens of James Bonds and Bart Simpsons (to use just two examples).