Google Offering Cash For Your Cache

pigrabbitbear writes "The gradual transformation of the web into an ultra-personalized, corporate-owned social space in the cloud has raised more than a few legitimate concerns about data privacy. Google, for obvious reasons, has always been one of the top cheerleaders for this metamorphosis. Touting a fresh new privacy policy that allows data about you from all of their services to coalesce, they've recently been particularly bullish about rendering that increasingly realistic digital portrait of you that lies stuffed away in their servers. It has led us again to question: How much are we comfortable with our machines knowing about us? How much is our privacy really worth? With their new program, Google is now asking those questions quite directly, and preceding them with dollar signs. Are we all on the verge of making our own information age Faustian bargains?"

Comments

Just Might Take Them Up On It

[Lieutenant Buddha]

Let me be the first (!) to say that I would not be entirely opposed to this idea. I am not a rich man and my data is private, just not... *that* private. While I disagree with the sale of personal data on principle, in practice I am really not concerned at all with anything I can envision them doing with that information. In a word, meh.

Re:Just Might Take Them Up On It

[EdIII]

why is it a problem the OP doesn't share your values? She's clear on the facts.

It's a problem because it has nothing to do with values. Saying it does implies that it is a lifestyle choice like pick-your-utopia day.

Although one might not be able to envision what you can do with information, that does not mean that something cannot be done with it, or be done with it in the future.

Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. History has shown us, in concrete factual terms, that people can do some downright nasty things to other people for any number of reasons and justifications tied to whatever values, religions, etc. you can think of.

Which is precisely why protecting your privacy, meaning protecting the information about you, is "value" agnostic. It is just simple logic. The less those in power know about you the more protected you are. Period. That simple. I could beat you over the head with history books for a few hours, but it really is that simple.

Information is power. Power corrupts. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely.

People can stick to their "values" and be completely open and free with all information that pertains to them. What will not change about it is the incredible danger they are in by doing so. That fact will remain timeless.

Re:Just Might Take Them Up On It

[Zontar The Mindless]

...I usually give them more data than they want. Poison the cache with random data and let's see how they find out how they match up.

That's kind of how I feel about Facebook photo tagging. Last week I got tagged in 6 photos taken on 3 different continents.

Of course, the date and/or location were wrong for 2 of them, and I was only actually *in* 4 of the photos, which should make things even more interesting.

So... Good luck figuring that out. :)

Re:Just Might Take Them Up On It

[wanzeo]

1. Install virtual machine
2. Install Chrome
3. Write Python script to browse web continuously
4. ???^h^h^h Sell cache
5. Profit!

Speaking as an "expert" in Faust...

[MrEricSir]

Speaking as someone who took a class about the myth of Faust, I can tell you in my expert opinion that my notes and papers from that course were lost when a brownout fried my hard drives. Damn! If only I'd sold my soul to a cloud backup service.

But this sounds more like a modernized, snoopier incarnation of AllAdvantage than a genuine Faustian bargain; particularly because you can quit whenever you want.