Jesus, settle down. Take the tin foil hat off. Your life won't be affected by Google archiving your search, gmail, you tube histories.

Prior to this change, Google profiled their users, but restricted the profile data use to the service from which the data was collected.

I assumed they had been correlating records from their many services all along. The new policy doesn't affect me because it's what I thought it was. I also assume they associate logged out activity with users based on patterns, like if I "log out" of my session Google is going to think it's probably still me behind the keyboard. Or if I log in Google is going to take recent not-logged-in activity and tie it to my account.

Then they're going to say we only see this one user at address 10.2.3.4 using OpenBSD from January 1 to January 17, so we're going to assume all the activity is him. And that browser signature jumped to address 10.2.3.97 starting January 18, so that must be him too.

I do delete Google cookies frequently, but I don't think that will protect my history if they really want it. At most it protects me from routine, automated mining.

downstairs: Jesus, settle down. Take the tin foil hat off. Your life won't be affected by Google archiving your search, gmail, you tube histories.

You'd really like us to believe that, wouldn't you? You're one of them. You are, aren't you?

I actually don't mind getting ads for cars instead of perfume, if that's all Google does. I don't believe that's the limit of what they do or will do.

Gist: "Don't use them".

Thanks, Ric.

ZAZ: I actually don't mind getting ads for cars instead of perfume, if that's all Google does. I don't believe that's the limit of what they do or will do.

You still see ads?

ecmoRandomNumbers

I don't use javascript so I see relatively few ads online. Gmail has none. Google search displays paid search results.

I really need someone to explain to me what it is exactly that I am supposed to be all het up about here.

ginandbacon: I really need someone to explain to me what it is exactly that I am supposed to be all het up about here.

When an advertiser and a consumer really, really love each other...

FTFA: Finally, most smartphones allow you to control location services. If you're concerned about privacy, keep it turned off while you are not using it. Not only does this protect your privacy, but it saves your battery life as well.

You could just do what I do and not put your every movement and incident of life online. I'm really quite difficult to locate, even if you know my true identity.

RoyBatty: ZAZ: Prior to this change, Google profiled their users, but restricted the profile data use to the service from which the data was collected.

I assumed they had been correlating records from their many services all along. The new policy doesn't affect me because it's what I thought it was. I also assume they associate logged out activity with users based on patterns, like if I "log out" of my session Google is going to think it's probably still me behind the keyboard.


Facebook does/did this, and it's wrong.

If Google does this too, it would be equally wrong.

My agreement, anyone's agreement, to their TOS can obviously only be enforced when I can be proven to be the person at the IP address. Associating non logged in activities with me would be evil.

No, the TOS is there for the website. If I run a site (and I do, many) I can track your any way I wish. Your recourse is just not visiting my site. Also, what is the real world danger in any sort of tracking? I only know what information you're willing to give me.

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: downstairs: Jesus, settle down. Take the tin foil hat off. Your life won't be affected by Google archiving your search, gmail, you tube histories.

That's not the point. It's the principle of the thing. People have the right to control their personal data.

Yep. So don't give up what you don't want to share. I could post my social security number right here in this post. But I'm not going to.

downstairs: Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: downstairs: Jesus, settle down. Take the tin foil hat off. Your life won't be affected by Google archiving your search, gmail, you tube histories.

That's not the point. It's the principle of the thing. People have the right to control their personal data.

Yep. So don't give up what you don't want to share. I could post my social security number right here in this post. But I'm not going to.

Actually, Fark has a filter that changes a social security number to all Xs.

For example, my (unedited) number is XXX-XX-XXXX

Nothing to worry about.

I'm kidding, by the way. DO NOT post your SSN.

The problem with Google (or anybody) having this much personal information is:

1) the information can be abused by the company, its employees, third parties, the government, the police, the security establishment, hackers, your wife's lawyer, etc.;
2) the information, even if used correctly, gives them immense power (for example, to sell you stuff you don't need or want or can't afford)
3) the information can be used abusively (or correctly) to data mine new information about you which you didn't give them and which gives them even more power over you, such as your passwords, your sex life, your politics, etc.

For example, data mining can tell the miner things about your sexual history, your politics, your religion and your personal life that you don't mean to give away.

We all know, for example, that WalMart shoppers tend to be Republicans and Target shoppers tend to be Democrats. This is not systematically true, but combined with the magazines to which you subscribe and the TV shows you watch, the books you read, the restaurants you frequent, the car you drive, the street and apartment number of your home address, where you work, the phone numbers of all your friends and family, etc., they can pinpoint with surprising accuracy whether you are likely to vote for Obama or Ron Paul.

Marketeers can tell a lot more about you from your address or your telephone number than you imagine. Combine that with your date of birth, your children's ages, etc., and they are well on the way to figuring out your password, sexgod or password123.

Google provides a tremendous range of services and goods to many people. When they combine all their various databases, they have a complete profile of information that you don't even know about yourself. They remember things forever that you forget instantly, such as that time you spent several minutes pouring over the gay porn site you clicked on "by accident", looking at pictures of well-hung young men, some of whom may have been under 16.

You don't have to do anything wrong or illegal for the information to come back and haunt you or to severely damage you, your friends or your family. You might be a freedom fighter, a hero, a saint, a proponent of all good things--but somebody, somewhere is going to hate you for it. If the information is recorded, it can be accessed. If it is gathered together, it can be analyzed. If it is data mined, it can generate a profile so detailed that your autobiography will look like a telephone number scratched on an ice cream bar.

For an expert in security, security is not just hiding the information until it is useless: it is not making the information available at all. One can keep a secret if that one is dead. Or maybe not. It depends on the secret--some secrets can be read from your bones or your DNA long after you are gone. Especially if companies and governments keep your DNA forever, replicating it as needed.

When social security numbers were brought in by the Canadian Government, it was promised that the numbers would never be used to cross link files between different agencies and ministries (like Revenu Canada, Unemployment Insurance Canada, etc.). Guess what? The promise was not kept. And your SIN number is on almost any form that you have to fill out, so every department is gathering personal information which can easily be cross-referenced in a database.

What is more, the computers and the companies which handle the private information are out-sourced, which means that a lot of them are in the USA, where the US government may not treat Canadian data any differently from how they treat US data. Which means that many Canadians are on no-fly lists for the same reasons many Americans are--because they have a common name that is shared with at least one potential "terrorist", a terrorist being defined as say, a Pakistani youth who goes home to visit the family or marry a Pakistani bride in an arranged marriage.

In short, you can't trust organizations to keep their promises, and you can't trust them to be unhackable.

With enough data, anybody can know more about you than God--only with a bit more incompetence and malice than God would presumably display.

Yet, even those of us who are paranoid are very trusting and constantly hand out the most personal data (that which generates our passwords, allows us to be physically tracked, and allows us to be identified as potential "risks" or "victims" by governments, banks, credit card companies, stores, churches, political groups, con artists, ex-spouses, terrorists, etc.) to anybody for any reason.

The Matrix, it is now. It is here. We made it carelessly and without aforethought. It's damn near impossible to escape. You have to provide this information if you want to do anything online. And the benefits of being online are so great and obvious that few of us are paranoid enough to be lurkers, never using so much as a land line or a TV set without cable.

We may hate our banks, our cable companies, our telephone companies, our govenrments, etc., but we have to deal with them a million ways and a million times a day or else be non-people with no lives.