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Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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You thought NSA was bad? What about GOOGLE?
Remember those rumors that Windows put in a back door in their operating system
so the government could access your computer? They never denied it.
A lot of us switched to Linux and use Foxfire, which is open source and safer
than something, like IE, which is closed coded. Now there is GOOGLE, a 122
billion dollar company now and the privacy implications for using Google is
something you may not have thought about.
Did you know google keeps everything. Every search you make is recorded and
kept forever -- and every piece of mail you send (when you use gmail). Google
wants to index everything. And if the government wants to know anything about
your online activity, they will get it from google.
Google censors for China and if the U.S. government tells it to jump, Google
asks "How high?"
Are you concerned about your privacy?
You should be..... AND now that the money is flowing they are pushing
advertising and some folks can't see the difference between the ads and valid
searches. Searches are done differently. Of course they're fast, which is why
everyone likes using them. That is because they crawl everyone's web site and
everything there is kept FOREVER. If you are a webmaster, you need to edit your
robots.txt file to keep them out of folders where you don't want them to go.
Nothing is private with them. They could (I say "could") write their software
to bypass you robots.txt file altogether. They are in control. Their spider is
as intrusive as an internet worm.
Google goes where it wants and it cooperates with the government. The Patriot
act gives the government the right to get whatever it wants and Google will
give it to them.
Are you worried yet?
Hank Roth
------------------
This following article is in compliance with the FAIR USE Doctrine for
education and discussion purposes. It is from The Birmingham Post of June 14th,
2005 in the UK. You are encouraged to post your views to the pnews-views
mailing list at [email protected]
Google's Internet Activity Could Be a Tempting Target for Privacy Abuse.
When Google's 19 million daily users look up a long-lost classmate, send email
or bounce around the web more quickly with its new Web Accelerator, records of
that activity don't go away.
In an era of increased government surveillance, privacy watchdogs worry that
Google's vast archive of internet activity could prove a tempting target for
abuse.
Like many other online businesses, Google tracks how its search engine and
other services are used, and who uses them. Unlike many other businesses,
Google holds onto that information for years.
Some privacy experts who otherwise give Google high marks say the company's
records could become a handy data bank for government investigators.
At a time when libraries delete lending records as soon as a book is returned,
Google should purge its records after a certain point to protect users, they
say.
'What if someone comes up to them and says, 'We want to know whenever this key
word comes up?' All the capability is there and it becomes a one-stop shopping
centre for all these kinds of things,' said Lauren Weinstein, an engineer who
co-founded People for Internet Responsibility, a forum for online issues.
Google officials say their extensive log files help them improve service, fight
fraud and develop new products, and unlike many other online companies, it
seems willing to pay for the enormous storage capacity needed to save the data.
'If it's useful, we'll hold on to it,' said Nicole Wong, a Google lawyer.
Google complies with law-enforcement investigations, Wong said. She declined to
comment on the frequency or scope of those requests. From the ground up, Google
designs its offerings to minimally impact user privacy, Wong said. Google
doesn't share the information it collects from visitors with outside marketers.
Employees must get executive approval before they examine traffic data, she
said.
Google logs the numerical IP address of each computer that visits many of its
sites, and deposits small bits of code known as 'cookies' on users' machines to
automatically remember preferences like which language they use, she said.
Users can reject cookies if they wish, but some services like Gmail, Google's
e-mail, will not work without them.
It's difficult to tie cookies and IP addresses to a particular person, Wong
said. The IP address of a computer can change every time it signs on to the
Internet, and different services use different cookies so the company doesn't
know, for example, that a particular Gmail user has visited the web site of an
abortion provider.
But in the absence of regulation, there's nothing to prevent Google from
linking together those cookies in the future.
Rivals like Yahoo and Internet service providers such as Time Warner's America
Online also track user activity. But ISPs generally don't hold onto such
information for more than a month because storage costs and privacy concerns
can mount quickly, said Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who has represented
ISPs in law-enforcement matters.
'If you don't have a reason to keep a bunch of data around, it's probably
prudent to get rid of it,' he said.
Yahoo declined to say how long it holds on to its log files.
Google's generous mail service creates risks as well. While AOL purges customer
e-mail from its servers after 28 days unless users specify otherwise, Gmail
encourages users to hold onto their messages indefinitely.
Most people don't know that a 1986 law gives less protection from government
searches to messages more than six months old, said Ari Schwartz, an associate
director at America's Center for Democracy and Technology.
'That doesn't mean that Google needs to change its technology, but they do need
to do some consumer education,' he said
-end-
-----
/ o o \
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Hank Roth's Place - http://pnews.org/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (on the InterNUT since 1982)
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