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Search Engine Privacy Explained
Kesch writes "Zdnet has a posted a FAQ describing the storage of personal information done by the search engines of AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and, of course, Google. They describe what information is stored, how it is stored, what laws protect it (none), how you can attempt to protect your privacy, and what Congress is doing with regards to the issue."
They describe what information is stored, how it is stored, what laws protect it (none)
As a company operating in the UK, and as I am a citizen of the UK, m privacy is protected by the Data Protection Act. I have the right to demand access to my data, and they are legally obliged to give it to me. If I find it to be incorrect, they are obliged to correct it. They can only use this data in the manner in which they are registered to use it with the Data Protection Registrar, and they can only share it with others under strict rules.
As I understand it, the rest of the EU have similar laws.
But it does leave a legitimate question.
Will those bastards at Google tell my wife about my chronic pr0n addiction?
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Google lets you remove your phone number from their database so other people can't look you up. They ought to let you remove your search history from their databases as well. I'm going to suggest this in their support forums.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
Yes, I know that Google, Yahoo etc are US companies.
However, they have UK operations and these operations will fall under UK law. In the case of Google, trying to access google.com will usually force you to google.co.uk if it detects your IPs geographical origin as being in the UK.
It would be reasonable to assume that the UK DPA would apply to information aquired by the UK operations of US companies.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
and not taking the easily available countermeasures (e.g. TOR, JAP) is playing with fire. But this isn't necessarily bad news for Google--if they can charge a "reasonable fee," they could make complying with subpoenas from prosecutors on fishing expeditions, the entertainment cartel, and divorce attorneys into a profit center!
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Let's think about the worst case scenario here: if search engines are required by law to give up their search history on a particular person, sure it's scary but it doesn't mean much. If you're in court for murder and the evidence is circumstantial at best, will the fact that you googled for "hot sex" and "people dieing" really get you that life sentence? Obviously this applies at a lot more to child pornography and copyright cases, but for some reason I don't think it would sway the majority of criminal cases. Even if google made some kind of GoogleSearchLookUp application right next to Earth and gmail, curiosty != guilty. If a lawyer brought this up, the judge would probably get all sorts of relevance objections from the opposing side, but I can imagine the jury being swayed by such evidence. Still, I think this is just another one of our privacies that we are throwing away today. If kids are getting arrested for requesting copies of the Little Red Book (discussed previously on slashdot) in libraries, I just wonder what you would get for googling "how to kill the president". In TFA, they quote one Harvard law professor calling the subpeona power "a blank check." I think in the future, Google will be forced to hand over their huge search histories on a daily basis for the federal government, and it would just be another big brother thing. Having this information is very useful to Google (study demographics of particular topics), so deleting it is a huge blow to their power Personally, I am infuriated that the government can just request this information at will. And we ALL know that this information won't be used JUST pursue terrorists...
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
...and what Congress is doing with regards to the issue.
That would be *other* than seizing our search data to try to prove that porn should be banned on the Internet, I assume.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
If you recall, all information placed in memory holes was supposedly destroyed, but it turned out that the government actually retained every item, and they came in handy for interrogation sessions.
Okay, so we all thought to some degree that the guy behind GoogleWatch was a nut. I suppose right now is when he can say: I TOLD YOU SO regarding the ability to compile search histories thanks to the never-expiring cookie.
Best,
Paul
ZDnet uses url redirection in the links in its story. You know... the story that mentions url redirection as an unsafe practice.
"The threshold rule is relevance," says Paul Ohm, the University of Colorado law professor. "Relevance has been quite broadly construed. As long as you can show that something's relevant to a case or criminal investigation, I think the litigant would have a pretty good argument."
The suggestion that relevance has been broadly construed is disturbing. The erosion of civil liberties needn't necessarily follow from the enactment of bad laws, but can, just as easily, follow from too broad an interpretation of existing laws and practices.
If the judiciary restrict the interpretation of terms like relevance to as narrow a meaning as possible there is less room for abuse, but in the present environment it's likely judges, not only in America, but in the west generally, will allow broad definitions of such terms to the detriment of civil liberties.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There's still no mention of Macromedia Flash. Flash applets are very popular on most pages nowadays. They are used for ads, interactive demos, forms and more. But, people don;t seem to realize that they are also highly effective for storing information that can and is used for tracking purposes on your computer.
Have a look at
~/macromedia/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys
or on Windows
C:\Documents and Settings\%UserName%\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys
Did you know that all of that was there? Do you know what's stored in all those files? Did you know that those files are accessible by any flash applet that runs on your system and that the flash applet can and does report back to its creator?
Then of course there are the problems due to Java script. Google has one for their analytics service that's all over the web tracking everyone. It's called Urchin and it's even in this page. Just look at the source for this page and search for "urchin.js".
People don't realize that they are totally OWNED!
Google has a Dutch portal and a Dutch sales office, both might make them responsible to follow the Laws of the Land.
Till now especially airlines have been exposed to the authority that is supervising adherence with this law but other companies with international operations are aware.
Teun@Tosh2:~$ whois google.nl
Rights restricted by copyright. See
http://www.domain-registry.nl/whois.php
Domain name:
google.nl (first domain)
Status: active
Registrant:
Google Inc.
Bayshore Parkway 2400
94043
MOUNTAIN VIEW CA
United States of America
Domicile:
Lagedijk 7
2064 KT SPAARNDAM
Netherlands
Sales Office Benelux
WTC2, Zuidplein 36
1077 XV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I was going to RTFA but then realized that zdnet is probably working in association with the government to gather information about people that would be interested in this article. And I'm not going to fall for it.
But having said that, what matters is where the end-user is located not where the page is generated (see French anti-nazi censorship story).
There are other programs and if you do not want your "private details" known then you would be wise to use them. In addition, anyone who thinks their private data that is held by organisations and government departments is safe whether there is a "Data Protection Act" or not then they should think twice for example the "National Security Agency eavesdropping on Americans incident". This is not the first time nor will it be the last time that such incidents will occur. Without being anonymous, we can never have true freedom of speech.
The more I know, the less I know
I'm not conspiracy theorist, but it seems pretty obvious the real value of this information and what the government might do with it once you examine the playing field and the objectives of all parties involved.
Frist and foremost, the Internet is currently unregulated. This really bothers most governments around the world, and probably the United States most of all. They want to have more control over this medium for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is tax purposes and the ability to influence the populace. Look at what's been done with mainstream media and you can have an idea of what the powers-that-be would like to see happen to the Internet.
However, the government cannot simply arbitrarily announce they're going to start heavily regulating the Internet. That's not going to work, so the first step will be to try to use some kind of politically-correct issue, to shoe-horn their grimy hands into the issue. This is likely to be something like child pornography, which very few will have problems with. Things like COPA are good examples of regulatory laws which were passed with a minimum of opposition due to the PC-nature of the issues they addressed, but they all have the ultimate goal of setting precedents where the government(s) can tell you what you can do with your web site.
The demographic profiling done by companies like Google is a big part of the government's ability to make their case for additional regulation.
Make no mistake, this is and will continue to happen. Whether or not any of us think that it's practical to try to control/regulate what happens online, the government is sure going to try. With more and more commerce moving to the online world, and less dependence upon traditional media sources, big companies are going to want to have their piece of the pie, and they rarely play fair. We should be paying very close attention to what happens from the perspective of this plan. We should expect and anticipate a few popular scenarios to present themselves which will sway public opinion into allowing more government regulation of online activity. This may have to do with terrorism, child porn, or even spam. It's going to be an interesting time in the next decade as we watch and see how select corporate and government interests try to bully their way into having control of the Internet. Search engines are treasure troves of information they can use to prove any claim they want.
Of course it does - Microsoft is a US company but when dealing in Europe it has to comply with OUR laws. Google is no different!
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
You missed a somewhat subtle nuance in his statement. Assumption, - you are right and we legally are not at war. Bush can, and is, still claiming that we are at war and is abusing this with his propoganda. Pretty much until the supreame court says no, Bush can still claim this. Whether he is right or wrong is mostly irrelavant.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
So a guy that makes fun of congress trying to ban internet pr0n is in your opinon "right-wing", interesting. Come on, I think /. is if anything slightly liberal, and I live in NYC.
We are all just people.
Support sites that protect your privacy and limit government access to it. Pretty simple statement but not easy to do even with the variety of competing search engines. For example for Newslookup.com I can tell you that your search results tracking, logs and personally indentifiable information is regularly purged. There are other search engines that also make this claim however many sites use a 3rd party to display Ads. With every page display the Ad serving company will have logged the referring link from the page which includes your search term.
:)
There are just so many levels at which you can be tracked and your private data can become public. In most cases I am against government regulation but I believe companies should be required to purge personally identifiable information along with tighter restrictions and penalities should private information be revealed.
It is likely the reverse will happen and perhaps that is an opportunity for competition where a cookie free news search engine with third party Ad serving such as Newslookup.com will benefit
# [Google Inc]
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
If you are using firefox, then there is an extension to customize your interaction with google. One of the preference sections is privacy settings. Options include anonymizing your user ID and never sending cookie data to google analytics.
labnol.blogspot.com has an article that discusses both of these options and also discusses how to add the hosts entry on a windows box.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables