Online security…or insecurity!
Google tracks your surfing (AdSense), has your calendar, Docs, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Reader, YouTube, and now Chrome OS. Add that to their poor privacy standards and….Houston, we have a problem!
Entire article here, bits below.
Do you trust Google? If you use its multitude of online services on a daily basis you might, but is that assumption wise? For some, Google is a wonderful company with a broad selection of useful online tools that make life easier, but for others
Artwork: Chip Taylor
Google is a looming, unregulated monster just waiting for the moment to drop the ‘don’t’ from the company’s unofficial motto, “Don’t be evil.”
Google tracks your online behavior to deliver relevant advertising; the company inadvertently controls a large amount of what you see online through its search results; it’s amassing the greatest library since Alexandria; it has a huge share of the online video market; and offers a wide range of services that bring more and more of your daily online habits into its online sphere.
Earlier this week, Google announced it’s jumping off its own servers and onto your desktop with its own operating system, Chrome OS. The move has prompted sharp reaction from privacy advocates.
Google has often been accused of poor privacy standards, and has been criticized over privacy many times.
Many people have a lot of information just sitting there on Google’s servers including personal appointments (Calendar), correspondence (Gmail), work and personal documents (Google Docs) and online reading habits (Google Reader).
In 2007, PC World published this startling chart showing the privacy risks for your information. The basic problem was that all your information is just sitting there on Google’s servers unencrypted, raising the risk of data loss, theft, or unauthorized access.
Never mind if a Google employee tries to get that information, but what if the government subpoenas Google?
According to its privacy page on Google’s Mobile Privacy page, the company says, “for products and services with voice recognition capabilities, we collect and store a copy of the voice commands you make to the product or service.”
Google’s Censoring You (in China)
A controversial issue surrounding Google, and other information gatekeepers, like Yahoo! and Bing, is how they are behaving in China. All of these search engines routinely block access to particular subjects, like Tiananmen Square, at the request of the Chinese government. Of course, if a Chinese citizen can access Google.com they would have the unfettered access they can’t enjoy on Google.cn.
No one outside of Google has even seen Chrome OS yet, but it’s already stirring concern with privacy advocates. That’s because Google and its attitude toward privacy has been called into question many times. When Google introduced its Chrome Web browser, the company was criticized for recording your keystrokes in Chrome’s search/address bar called the Omnibox, and that was before you even hit the enter key. Sure you could turn this setting off, but shouldn’t it have been an opt-in function to begin with? Will Chrome OS be tracking your on- and offline behavior by default as well?
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