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Google Defends Privacy Policies
adeelarshad82 writes "Google responded to a letter from 10 international privacy commissioners who criticized the company's approach to privacy, insisting that Google protects its customers and has moved quickly to make changes regarding Google Buzz. In a letter to the commissioners, global privacy counsels for Google stated, 'We are committed to being transparent with our users about the information that we collect when they use our products and services, why we collect it, and how we use it to improve their experience.' The April inquiry from the officials included privacy commissioners from Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK."
Online service backtracks after privacy overshare. We'll monitor this story overnight and have a full report to you on the Really Early Local News. We start before normal people wake up.
Given the horrid behavior of Facebook over the last month I'm feeling a lot better about Google. Maybe they're equally sleazy, but at least they don't whack you over the head with their sleaze.
If anything it's Facebook's "We honestly don't give a shit what you think 'cause millions of others won't care what we do as long as they've got Farmville" attitude that annoys me more than the privacy issues.
Three Squirrels
'We are committed to being transparent with our users about the information that we collect when they use our products and services, why we collect it, and how we use it to improve their experience.'
Google doesn't collect peoples' information for the happy, innocent purpose of improving their experience. They collect peoples' information to make money. Why can't they be honest about that?
It doesn't even make it okay to do both.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
it's easy to say 'google doesnt value privacy' . however i have yet to see someone make a post in any of these stories about an alternative search engine that
- gives just as good of results as google
- has a history of protecting privacy (google resisted a court order from the government as much as they could. other search engines happily complied)
the deal with search engines is simple. if you want a good working search engine that supports MILLIONS of users you are either going to have to pay or the search provider will need to use advertising. also said search provider is going to need to mine search results to give better results and when the government brings a patriot act court order , any business is going to comply.
do you think bing, yahoo and altavista would tell the US government "we'll take jail over handing you these records"? atleast google's owners tell you if you don't want your searches for something recorded, dont do them online in a non-anonymous way because it recorded. do you see another search provider doing that?
Better than shitty can still be shitty
So then of course the obvious answer, since we can't have privacy, is to flood the world with information about every single person... so long as you have enough money to pay for that information.
That's a MUCH better logical situation. It's still bullshit, but that didn't stop you, so why should it stop me?
Why do we have this discussion every single week?
Here is the first distinction that we have to make:
a) Services that publish private information
b) Services that do not publish private information
Facebook and other atrocities are clearly in the a) group. They publish your information for anyone to see and there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, you have no right to complain, since that is the bloody purpose of the service.
Google, on the other hand, is in group b). They do collect user information, but they process that information in an automated way, gather stats, and let you store, organize and share that information. They DO NOT publish that information or make it available to any other third party. Nobody except for a perl script and a SQL server is looking at your data. And you have no right to complain, since that is the purpose of the service.
So, you don't want your information published: Do not use services in a) group.
You don't want your information automatically analyzed and processed, do not use services in b) group.
It is truly that simple. I do not use any service in group a). I do use google, and many of its services. All the information is kept between google and me. You see, I want them to do what they do. I like the way they analyze my data and the way they allow me to manipulate it. You know what happens to the information I want no one to see? it is not published publicly. Do you know what happens to the info I don't want google's perl scripts to see? it doesn't get uploaded in the first place.
It's like going to a horror movie and complaining that you got scared. It was a fucking horror movie! what are you complaining about?
People upload all of their private info into some unknown "social network" and then complain about privacy. It's in the fucking name, what are you complaining about?
Can we really get over this?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The privacy nuts are rather like the abortion nuts. Although there are many views only one side pushes forward. Just as we never see gangs of protesters marching for abortion but only against abortion we see only the privacy freaks protesting the supposed evils of free information. Some people seem to only feel safe if they are living totally obscured from the view of all others.
Uh, that's a poor comparison. Most anti-choice (I refuse to label them pro-life, as someone can be pro-life and pro-choice without contradicting themselves) protesters are fighting to outlaw abortion, while "privacy freaks" typically are more concerned with their own privacy (and bitching about the lack thereof). I don't have a Facebook account with any real information, and I try to educate people about privacy, but I'm hardly campaigning to outlaw status updates. I think people should have the right to tell the world when they are taking a shower and what they thought about the Shawshank Redemption. I just think that they should be clearly informed of what is being done with their data and any transfer of the data to a third party should be an opt-in process.
STATUS UPDATES ARE MURDER
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Yeah. It's too bad they don't have easy to follow instructions on how to disable that.
The phrase "disable tracking from google" gave me the referenced link as first result.
I tried a bing search and not until the 5th result did I even get an official msn link (and that link seems to have nothing to do with my query.) The other official microsoft link was for a pdf file. No other results on that page nor the next (it defaults to 10 results per page.)