Google Privacy Quickies

Several notes about Google and privacy. First, Lucas123 informs us that Google's global privacy counsel blogged about an improvement in Google's data-retention policies: the company plans to anonymize data it stores about users after 18 months — a slight improvement on the "18 to 24 months" of the previous policy. This move may have come as a response to pressure from European regulators. Next, Spamicles sends in word that an EFF attorney has been photographed by Google's Street View. The funny thing is, this isn't the first time it's happened. Finally, word from reader tamar that if you choose to share a video from Google Video to another social network like MySpace, your username and password get sent over http in plaintext, rather than the more secure https.

Comments

Re:Photographed in public? Oh well!

[drinkypoo]

If it takes a $20 a pack tax and firing anyone who so much as brings a cigarette to any place of employement, let's do it.

Making things illegal has pretty much never been successful in reducing their use.

Prohibition of alcohol simply ended up funding organized crime - all they had to do was give the public what it wanted. Prohibition was ended primarily to prevent this trend from continuing, in order to unglamorize being a ganster. Of course, today we have hip-hop to make sure that every kid wants to tote a gun. (ObDisclaimer: I like and listen to hip-hop on a daily basis.)

Prohibition of Marijuana has simply driven it underground, and it's not even physically addictive (according to every reputable study on the subject, including those both paid for and carried out by the US government.) Do you really think that prohibition of tobacco would stamp it out? Taxing it at such a high rate would only produce a grey market, which would probably be highly successful given that the whole world isn't going to ban smoking.