Slashdot Mirror
Google Bans Online Anonymity While Patenting It
theodp writes "'It's important to use your common name,' Google explains in its Google+ ground rules, 'so that the people you want to connect with can find you.' Using a 'secondary online identity,' the search giant adds, is a big Google+ no-no. 'There are lots of places where you can be anonymous online,' Betanews' Joe Wilcox notes. 'Google+ isn't one of them.' Got it. But if online anonymity is so evil, then what's the deal with Google's newly-awarded patent for Social Computing Personas for Protecting Identity in Online Social Interactions? 'When users reveal their identities on the internet,' Google explained to the USPTO in its patent application, 'it leaves them more vulnerable to stalking, identity theft and harassment.' So what's Google's solution? Providing anonymity to social networking users via an 'alter ego' and/or 'anonymous identity.' So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting?"
This is Google aggressively patenting online anonymity technology and methods so that other social networks and websites cannot provide anonymity . This is MUCH MORE SERIOUS than left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It's a patent that blocks others from using said technology. This is evil^2, and Google of course benefits from it because this makes it easier for Google to identify people with their real names, and target ads to them.
I claim it.
Yes, please, patent something that I've been doing on IRC since the early 90s... go right ahead.
...so long as they alone know who they really are so the data aggregated goes in the right buckets.
Nothing's stopping Google+ from offering a secondary ID you can become, while Google still knows who you are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaSqH8lhB0M
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
How oh HOW is this patentable?
How can they know who the real me is when I can even answer that question without having a quorum among myself.
looks like slashdot was just sold again.
"There are lots of places where you can be anonymous online. Google+ isn't one of them."
Yes, that's why I'm not on Google+ or Facebook.
Not directly related, but yesterday on youtube my account suggested to me in a popup to change my account name to my real name. I passed, but I was then prompted for a reason with a 6 tile multiple choice. If I wanted to change my account name to my real name I would have indicated that when I set it up, or altered the settings.
There are two basic levels of anonymity. The first is anonymity to others by using an alias. The second is being anonymous to Google, which is harder. (To be anonymous in the second case, you'd need to be behind a different IP than normal.) Google cannot prove anonymity in the second one unless they somehow help you be anonymous to them.
Wow, what a great idea! There CANT be any prior art, who would have thought of using an assumed name online!?
Seriously, I'm known by various names in different communities. Hell, half the people who I interact with on a regular basis don't know my real name.
Google can go fsck themselves.
Google is a lot bigger than Google+. Just like almost everything else in the computer world, different priorities and tools apply to different contexts. A social networking site might be a lot easier to administer, run, and use (for some) if everyone used their real names. That doesn't mean they dislike privacy or anonymity, they just don't want it there. You can still go elsewhere or use their other services where Google might be more willing to aid (or at least try to) privacy and anonymity.
"...so that the people you want to connect with can find you..."
If you allow any name, then people who want to use their real name can, and people who want to be anonymous can.
If you allow only real names, then you preclude the second group. In BOTH cases, people who want to be "found" by their real name can be, so you've removed functionality unnecessarily. The reason you claim to remove it still exists even if you don't remove it.
Providing feature A is not an excuse for removing feature B when A can be provided whether or not B is provided.
And some situations demand clarity.
The main problem is that people use "Act like an ass" as an excuse for using anonymity (or is it the other way around?).
Of course, one person's "Act like an ass" is another person's "Saying what needs to be said".
There is probably no good democratic way to resolve many of these cases one way or the other.
(Ie, having a lot of people being offended doesn't necessarily justify exposing a poster's identity.)
Google has become the epitome of EVIL on the INTERNET.
That being said, I'm staying with GMAIL and Chrome...
To delete your profile:
Sign in to your Google profile.
Click Edit profile.
Click the About tab.
Click Delete profile and disable Google Buzz completely.
Click Yes, delete my profile and posts.
is it that difficult to figure it out? They will, in theory, offer you some anonymous cloak to protect you're real identity from others, except Google. Google can then provide that information any time any law enforcement or investigative body comes knocking. Nothing more than CYA.
Sure, require the person's real name, but let them choose whether or not to make it public. If you keep your real name private, you can go by some screen name publicly. Someone searching for you by your real name can offer a connection. If you choose to accept, then your public screen name becomes known to them.
Technoli
It's not that difficult: the Google+ folks want real-world info for ad-tracking, while the other systems (YouTube, etc) don't care as long as you're viewing their stuff.
Just read an irate rant from a Mr. Al-Zawahiri about the change in his Google+ account status.
Anonymous to Google = no way.
So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting?
Google does not believe. They do not believe in protecting anonymity, nor in advancing reliable identities. Google wants money and power. There was a time when it was reasonable to think that Google believed in things, that they wanted to do good, but those times are gone. Google wants to make money on anonymity because they want to make money, not because they believe free speech depends on anonymity. They want to make money on reliable identities because they want to make money, not because they believe identities should be reliable. They want to make money on being the only one who knows the real identities because they want to make money, not because they believe one company should be the sole authenticator.
Most sufficiently large corporations have no beliefs. "I want as much stuff as I can get" is not a belief. Beliefs are things for which you are willing to make deep sacrifices. When a company sees that the patent system is broken and its public response is that they need to get more aggressive about patents, it is a clear statement that they lack motives outside of acquisitiveness and will-to-power. Avarice is not a belief, it is our default state when we choose not to elevate ourselves above the animals. Google does not believe.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Or famous.
The executive in charge of Google+ is Vic Gundotra. But his name isn't really Vic. Mr. Gundrota is Indian and his real first name is Vivek. Yes that's right. The person mandating that you must use your real name, is using a phoney name.
Then there are the celebrities, like Fifty Cent and Lady Gaga who are allowed to use their fake names.
Google gets a +1 for hypocrisy.
Once upon a time, when I first got on the Internet (late 1980s), there was no anonymity. Sysadmins voluntarily adhered to a policy where each user's online identity and their real identity were linked. If someone ever found a way to break this link, it was considered a bug which needed to be fixed. It was staunchly enforced by admins who believed the net would devolve into a morass of misbehavior if people were allowed to post anonymously.
There were a few people running their own servers who bucked the trend, but it wasn't until AOL joined USENET that pseudonyms became a fact of life on the Internet. AOL allowed each account to have up to 5 usernames, ostensibly for families sharing a single AOL account. Obviously these extra usernames were quickly taken up by people wishing to post things online anonymously, which was good for free speech. But not surprisingly, spam was invented shortly thereafter.
All that's happening now is that the pendulum is starting to swing the away from anonymity as netizens struggle to figure out the best balance between real names and pseudonyms. The people at the pro-anonymity extreme won't like it, just like the people at the pro-real-name extreme didn't like it in the early 1990s. But as with most things the best balance is probably somewhere in between.
you fucktard editor. They said they dont want it on their stuff.
omg wtf lol day can do dat oohhhhhhhhh...
Or, by patenting it, they ensure that anyone else trying to allow online anonymity violates the patent in some way, thereby outlawing online anonymity.
At least, that's one use for the patent - to prevent someone from doing stuff counter to your interests.
Google is your friend. Why won't you allow Google to be your friend?
http://youtu.be/-wntX-a3jSY
I, for one, do not welcome our anonymity-banning overlords; which is why I am in the process of replacing all my Google products (Android phone gone, Google+ gone, YouTube gone, Gtalk gone, Gmail migrating, Docs and Voice pending; I've also moved a couple of local organization I consult for off of Apps).
..so that they have an easier job wasting your money with the whores the surveillance gear contractors have sent. Then the Catholic King Carlos Obama will collect all the evidence and apply His Spanish Inquisition to you Sheep. You will be incarcerated until you confess whatever Carlos and his Bankster friends want you to confess,
The worst sin: Have a Cache Of Gold, so that they cannot easily fuck with the currency.
Americans, if you let all of this happen, you deserve it.
And if you think it is not good enough, patch it until it does 25 hops or any number the user wants it to do. Use GPG.
Or Submit To King Carlos Obama and his Spanish Inquisition.
Now that was low. Idea, why don't we just decide debates by who has the lowest user id? Google only got their patent today, we don't know yet whether they will use it to sue someone. Also, there's a direct link to the patent, are you questioning the factuality of the USPTO?
Thank you for pointing us in their general direction.
...are appendices and R&D labs for NSA. They even hired former Bell Labs scientists. Bell Labs brought us that wonderful technologies C and C++. Well-suited for the spooks of this world to penetrate systems made with these languages.
Google is just the last incarnation of that government/Industrial snooping complex. Before it was the Bell System. It is about control and making sure there is no resistance against their plutocratic schemes from permanent war to destroying hard-earned savings.
Or at least a communist. If we cannot prove that with some waterboarding, we will at least Charge Your Of Being French.
Google+ can fucking blow me. Apparently, unless you took your grade school American history in the US, you don't *get* what part anonymous speech, starting with Paine and Franklin, played in American history and what it means to Americans culturally and historically to be able to say what they want when they want the way they want using whatever literary or social devices they think will best serve their ends.
Google+ is a walled garden of another kind- a walled garden of people willing to submit their identities and their opportunity for free as in psychologically-socially-and-politically speech at any bunch of personalities who form themselves into the role of "service provider". These people are obsessed with the notion that the missing step in the Underwear Gnome chain is, "and then we make everyone give us their real identity !!".
You know what? My life means something to me, and and it's not going to be reduced, limited, attenuated or otherwise obstructed by the my failure to see today what implications someone's arbitrary demands can have on my tomorrow.
Essentially this turns the internet into a small town. People leave small towns and go to big cities for a lot of good reasons and one of those is to escape the gossipy nature of those places where your reputation gets fixed early on and stays forever. Sorry if you're stuck in the public spotlight forever and there's no escape for you, Google guys, but perhaps counting your billions will serve as some form of consolation.
Banning anonymous speech is culturally short-sighted, historically ignorant and politically incendiary. No one but professional loud mouths, professional opinionators, and tenured profs is going to offer a frank opinion on jack lest it be used against them in some unforseen way later in life.
But it's deeper than that. There's a reason Franklin and Paine published anonymously. Some things need to be said despite what people want to hear. Someone has to play Cassandra. It's hard enough finding the courage to tear yourself away from comforting illusions, adding onto that a tax most ordinary people literally have no way to bear- loss of a job, loss of friends, loss of opportunity- makes truth tellers, anonymous and otherwise, that much more unlikely to emerge. And this in a time when truth tellers are so desperately needed.
It's really just Common Sense http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/.
Too bad Google doesn't have much of that left.
oh wait, this was Google. Well, carry on then! Android 4 lyfe bro!
I still use Gmail for several deterrent accounts and 1 main account. I've been setting these up over the past 3 months or so. So far, The count is up to 8. Google has tried to force them to sign up for Google+, but each time the sign up page presents itself I just close it down and relogin. Until Google makes Google+ mandatory for using their services, this usage pattern will repeat. When that day arrives, I'll pay for my own domain(s) and set up shop over there.
This whole social aspect of the Internet is mostly about the advertisers getting control again. I lived too long without TV to have that happen again.
"'It's important to use your common name,' Google explains in its Google+ ground rules, 'so that the people you want to connect with can find you.'"
Bullshit, on the order of nazi propaganda. Google wants you to use your real name so they can make more money from me. The people I want to connect with me can easily find me, I mail them a alink - your policies are making people I DON'T want to connect with find me.
Or it would if I used G+ which I won't. But you've lost your way greedy google.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This is the reason Google have patented this. They may or may not have any intention of using it, but someone else might. And that someone else might decide Google is infringing on their patents, so Google unot./se it defensively. Or perhaps another company would like to license it. Or perhaps they never use it. Or they might change their mind about their policies.
Even though it's most likely this patent will never be used, patents are so cheap that it's still worth patenting everything just on the off-chance.
PlainBoards.com. Spread the word. This needs to get big.
..start our own, anonymous/pseudonymous "hidden" internet. Do everything on hidden TOR services (or maybe even something better). No doubt the gobbermint will be pissed off. They will smear it as Child Pornography (which is actually a codeword of the elite and has little to do with kiddie sex-pics). Or Terrorism. Or Money Laundering. Or War on Drugs.
I do think Mr Romney is an idiot as he support Jewish warmongering, but he spoke the truth when he said that 50% of Americans are on the government teat. The whole western world is enslaving itself to government taxation, control and handouts to an excessive degree. The whole commercial "cloud" thing is part of this route into the Sinkhole Of Oppression.
If you dislike it, use TOR, use a search engine like YaCY and send encrpyted emails via pseudonymous email accounts. Yandex still offers email without the need to have it verified by telephone. And it works from TOR.
Did you notice the Bankster site economist.com does not allow for postings from TOR exit routers ? The Bilderbergs have grown cautios.
I'm confused. Why doesn't AOL have colossal prior art on this?
They had a Master Account system with subsidiary names. For those who are too young and need to Get Off Your Lawn, it was Dad who had the Master account, and then we young'uns had all the subsidiary names. (Sometimes several per person!) This was fairly important for RP in the Red Dragon Inn, etc. I hadn't gotten into bulletin boards by then, but it still held. But if you got too nasty, one of the Moderators would report you, and it would trickle up the food chain.
So not knowing Patentese, how did poor ol' faded glory AOL not even get a few bucks of licensing rights?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yahoo Mail has had this for years.
That's only one example.
Ms. Concepcion L. Garcia
1769 Clearview Drive
Centennial, CO 80111
Phone: 303-721-9441
DOB: October 31, 1929
Email Address: ConcepcionLGarcia@teleworm.us
(etc)
Yeah, right.
I just read through the patent and I can't make head or tail of what exactly is being patented. The best I can tell is some sort of system that has multiple identities that it shows to different people depending on your relationship.
And if it's difficult to tell what is being patented should it really be patented?
You're an intern at the White House?!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If Google is intending to stamp out online anonymity entirely, patenting the process by which people can be more easily be made anonymous seems like it would be a good way to force the market in that direction. All they have to do is refuse to license the patent, and litigate infringing companies and competing social networks, and suddenly the Google and the NSA are handed a great gift in that everyone's online identity will be tied to their real one.
I'm changing my name to Anonymous Coward....
This is why we are getting unending stream of FBI agents, bill collectors, and brides abandoned at the altar streaming to out home! Damn you!
Google actually needed the anonymity engine to help promote its products in on-line forums and to allow customer support representatives to avoid revealing their true identity and to assume personal characteristics of other cultures.
One of the nice things about having used a pseudonym since 1996, is that is actually becomes your identity.
At least so far as Google+ is concerned.
I imagine their crawlers skitter through the net, looking up my "name", and find everything going back sixteen years on Usenet and more. So my pseudonym never gets flagged as potentially false.
And even if it does, I can just use a fake driver's license generator to "verify" my identity. Done and dusted.
I'm posting this as AC, because although I can jump through hoops to do that fake verification, I'd rather not have to do it.
At any company that's ever designed or manufactured a cell phone, the modern doctrine is "patent first, ask questions later".
The idea that any such corporation would ratify their patent application stream against their patent-pending portfolio under any metric of superficial common sense (common sense is always superficial) is beneath the dignity of nerds anywhere, except on a slow news day, or at a once-proud page view hamster wheel and troll feeder.
[quote]So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'?[/quote] Beat that siri, bet you don't have emotional opinions
Google+ requires a real (sounding) name? And people are deep into the throes of despair over it. I'm sorry but I have completely run out of rodent nether parts and therefore cannot give a rat's ass about their demand. I note however that they have become a worthy competitor to the Evil Empire of Redmond and will have to be watched, carefully. /. but can't find it.
Damn, I thought I had a fake name around here for
I'm confused. Why doesn't AOL have colossal prior art on this?
They had a Master Account system with subsidiary names. For those who are too young and need to Get Off Your Lawn, it was Dad who had the Master account, and then we young'uns had all the subsidiary names. (Sometimes several per person!) This was fairly important for RP in the Red Dragon Inn, etc. I hadn't gotten into bulletin boards by then, but it still held. But if you got too nasty, one of the Moderators would report you, and it would trickle up the food chain.
So not knowing Patentese, how did poor ol' faded glory AOL not even get a few bucks of licensing rights?
Oh, I remember the Red Dragon Inn well... I was one of the "hosts" for a few years in the mid-90s. But anyway, here's claim 1 of the patent:
1. A computer-implemented method for generating a plurality of personas for an account of a first user of a social network performed on one or more computing devices, the method comprising:
receiving, using the one or more computing devices, information for the plurality of personas from the first user, wherein the information comprises a name, a representation, and a visibility level for each persona in the plurality of personas;
associating the information for the plurality of personas to the account of the first user;
associating a particular persona of the plurality of personas with a second user on the social network, the second user being distinct from the first user;
receiving a selection of one of the plurality of personas from the first user;
determining, using the one or more computing devices, an appearance of the selected persona based at least in part on the visibility level and representation of the selected persona; and
providing the determined appearance for display.
I've italicized claim elements that I don't remember AOL having. Even if you interpreted the multiple AOL screennames as "a plurality of personas" each having their own "name", there wasn't any sort of representation or visibility level, nor did AOL determine an appearance of the persona based on the visibility level and representation.
So, AOL doesn't anticipate the patent... However, it could potentially be combined with other prior art to show that this claim is obvious. I'd look at Facebook's different visibility settings for profile items depending on how another user is related to you. That's probably a closer place to start anyway.
Sue me now!
No Google- for me. or face page. (Big Brothers). I dumped my g+ when they just suspended account. Guess what most of the spam stopped coming to my account. And now when I go on you tube, I don't see all those soft porn flicks they stuff in between "detecting neutrinos" and "Lectures on the standard physics model". I don't see the service lasting more than another year then fading. I also noticed email from my twitter account stopped coming in and a yellow bar stating your email is not working popped up. When I sent an email to twitter help I got a nasty gram back about not deliverable. I checked the headers and server spew and there it was mx,google.com refused connection. Google actually blocked mail coming from twitter so I had to change my email addy which was successful.
What's precisely so special about gmail, now that there are all of these hidden downsides lurking?
I'm giggling because I've been a yahoo mail user for some 8 years, and while dear ol' Yahoo isn't doing all that great, Yahoo Is Not Google (YING?) so they aren't too deeply hooked to anything else and I don't see these kinds of stories about them.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Google, as the do-no-evil company is a joke. Everyone knows that. There's an evil hand at play too at a high level.
we hippy liberals hate the corporations. Here, this corporation has single handedly taken our right to online anonymity away. If you want to be anonymous online you can only use sites who pay google for the patent. If no one agrees to do that then you will no longer be allowed, by a single corporate entity, to be anonymous online.
provided me with a guy who's now been stalking me for more than two years and recently moved across the country into my neighborhood. Google can go nasty word itself...
Ah, just when I sort of started to like Google they proved once more they are pure evil. What they are trying to do is a BIG evil, as big as patenting the internetz. Shame on all those smart developers that work there.
Google knows full well that there are good reasons for people to use pen names, we've reached a point where even your web searches can be directly associated with your ID in real life. So, whatever tickles your fancy in your private life can be wide open in a job interview - goodbye private life. It's the ultimate hypocrysy when Google says, "you can be anonymous to everyone else, just not to us." What a mess, the options a person has when they've filed a restraining order or just want to ask a stupid question in a newsgroup have slowly been dwindling to almost nothing. Do not use Facebook, Twitter, Google, or any other service that REQUIRES the use of a real name.
Hello? The patent system is completely broken. Film at 11.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Sounds like google wants to block anyone from offering this rather than using the patent to allow others to do so.
How in the whole freakin' rational universe can this type of thing be patented?? I think I'll patent "flatulation while seated without audible disturbance" and then prevent guys all over from doing that. It's more inventive than this totally ridiculous patent (and for that matter most of the patents that the USPTO grants these days)
Ok, everybody move to shadownet.