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Google's Data-Storage Fuels Privacy Fears
taoman1 writes "Facing worries about its tracking Web surfers' every move, Google Inc. is now offering a feature to track Web surfers' every move.
Its free Web History service is strictly voluntary — Google users can sign up to have the Internet giant keep detailed records of every website they visit so they can easily find them again later.
Web History's quiet debut this week came as privacy advocates continued to raise alarms about the prospect of Google combining its collection of information on individuals with that of DoubleClick Inc. Google has agreed to acquire the New York-based company, which distributes Web ads and tracks where the majority of people go on the Internet, for $3.1 billion."
For the paranoids I'd recommend the CustomizeGoogle firefox extension - among other things (like removing those pesky ads) it can reduce the ability for Google to track what you are doing.
Because some of us use more than one computer. Like on my desktop I use Epiphany for regular stuff and Firefox when I need to do web dev stuff. Then I have my Mac, which is Safari and Firefox (same rule, spend most of my time in Safari since I go to multiple networks). Then when I go to work I (funnily enough) work on items that are personally interesting (I love my job) so sometimes what I search at home is relevant at work and vice versa, some times what I research at work is relevant to things I want to play with at home. At work I use Firefox (usually on a Windows box and IE isn't really a web browser) and sometimes its useful when I search for something ages ago to see the date and time for the ones I went to long after its disappeared from my search history. As you can probably figure out, I've used it for months now and I don't have any issues with it. I use my home del'icio'us account as well at work, to be honest for the same reason (plus it makes my bookmarks more portable as well).
I always wondered where this setting was...
When you're really worried about tracking from google, why not use scroogle scraper?: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm Mark
Unselfish actions pay back better
But the user-facing web history has nothing to do with the internal data Google is keeping about your searches. The internal data has much more detail: where you were coming from when you did the search, which ads and links they showed you in the results, which you click on (and which you *didn't*), whether you came back later for more. All of this and more! And believe me they do *not* delete it when you delete your web history, or cookies.
It is the cost to you of having access to so powerful a tool. Whether it's a good deal or not I would not presume to judge. But you should definitely be fully apprised of the cost.
Another reason to get the TrackMeNot Firefox extension, which performs random Google queries constantly in the background. It frustrates attempts at identifying a user through search term frequency analysis.
You didn't read the privacy policy closely enough.
"You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems."
(From http://mail.google.com/mail/help/privacy.html )
In other words, they are careful with data, keeping it online, replicated, and also backed up offline. (It would be pretty careless treatment of user data if they didn't.) When you delete, it clearly deletes the online copy right away. The replicas take a while to catch up, and since this is the posted policy they want to give a worst-case number. If there's a network partition or something, it could take a long time for the replicas to sync up. If they ship something off to tape, well, they're not going to hunt it down and delete messages one a time off a tape reel. (Can you imagine the cost per user if they did?)
In the modern age, sincerity doesn't always play well. People either don't believe it, or they make fun of it. (Then later they get upset when companies behave insincerely.) But Google is sincere. Some people don't believe it, but it's true.
heres an easy to use one.
http://www.mysecureisp.com/