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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 can they know who the real me is when I can even answer that question without having a quorum among myself.
"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.
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.
Yup. We know. http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/18/1457243/dice-buys-geeknets-media-business-including-slashdot-in-20m-deal
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
hahaha ... I totally missed that!
Nothing like breaking news for those too lazy to scroll down the home page.
How appropriate that you posted the news as a dupe
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Wow, what a great idea! There CANT be any prior art, who would have thought of using an assumed name online!?
How oh HOW is this patentable?
Simple: File it with USPTO.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.)
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.
How oh HOW is this patentable?
Simple: Have your veritable army of on-staff patent lawyers file it with USPTO.
FTFY.
They'd never allow little guys like you and I to patent such a thing.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If you allow only real names, then you preclude the second group..
And I'm perfectly OK with that. In fact it's why I use Google+ and not other social networks. There are dozens of other social networks that allow anonymous accounts, if you have something that can only be said anonymously then go use one of those, some of them even have more users, and larger audiences than Google+. In the mean time I'll enjoy a network free from the likes of "MonkeyFucker-69"; one where people behave better.
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.
The real problem with that part you quoted is that the logic is completely backwards. How do people I want to connect with know to try to find me? If I wanted to connect with them, it should be my problem to go find them, not their problem to come find me.
Just read an irate rant from a Mr. Al-Zawahiri about the change in his Google+ account status.
Yeah, this must be pretty frustrating to people on a website where people think NASA wouldn't be able to patent a working Warp Drive because it was portrayed on Star Trek.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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?
Right. I see your logic. Because others have been warp-driving around the galaxy for decades!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You're not their customer.
My nick is houghi. On some sites I have been asked to fill out a first and last name. I also am asked to enter existing addresses. My details on some sites is now:
Mrs. Hou Ghi
DOB: 01-01-1950
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20502
I hope I never do anything wrong, because I would hate to bring the people who live there in trouble.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How oh HOW is this patentable?
Simple: Have your veritable army of on-staff patent lawyers file it with USPTO.
FTFY. They'd never allow little guys like you and I to patent such a thing.
Sure they would. Then their invincible army of patent l*wy*rs would rape pillage and plunder you and your family's bank accounts and scam up the patent. Why innovate when you can litigate?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
All of googles services are unified now, so if you use your real name in one place, it's attached to everything you do, from youtube to gmail to google code.
It's about advertising and data mining, and you know that, as you are obviously a google astroturfer - ironically posting anonymously.
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?
In the USA, Google fsck YOU.
(Apologies to the Russians, but I'm afraid they've fallen behind us again.)
We must not allow the Russians to win the search engine war! We cannot afford a search engine gap!! [/drstrangelove]
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Thank you for pointing us in their general direction.
Google didn't really have much in the way of 'real' info for me....the youtube account email address, is not the one used for gmail. They did finally get my real info...from the youtube account when I had to set things up for revenue generation (I couldn't figure how to earn $$ from them and still stay anon).
Strangely enough, they have my real name now associated with that particular YT account...but they don't nag me to change it to show my real name on the account/channel.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
By your comments it appears that MoneyFucker-69 is someone who has seriously wronged you.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
[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
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.
They'd never allow little guys like you and I to patent such a thing.
Of course they will, there is nothing personal in this, matter of fact there is a garden variety solicitor here in Melbourne who (as a joke) applied for and obtained a patent on the wheel in the late 90's. The patent office will stamp virtually anything you put in front of it, there is no incentive for them to take any care in the process because they don't have to clean up their own mess, just stamp it, collect the filing fees, and dump the real work into the lap of the judicial branch. Now when it does get to court people will spend both a fortune and an eternity to debate said patent. It would cost a fraction of that to do the job properly in the first place, perhaps if judges had the power to throw this stuff back at the patent office and order them to do a proper job it would be less disruptive to everyone else.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No you're an astroturfer because you said something that the responder could not digest, it's inconceivable that someone could be so stupid as to have a different opinion, therefore somebody must be paying you.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Weird, I don't think Google is the epitome of evil. All their technology offerings have sticky strings attached and are geared towards data mining you. But
a) There's plenty of worse monsters out there (like facebook, MS, ORACLE).
b) There's still a lot of good stuff coming out from them. Things like Go and SPDY.
c) They are a good influence in the Internet. They do much more good than harm as far as I'm concerned.
I, however, don't use neither gmail nor chorme nor search, nor android.
Basically I'm ok with Google at a distance.
But... the future refused to change.
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
While they require a viewing public, that is basically an endless stream. They can absorb most of the backlash and not even notice. Once they are hit with reduced revenew, they notice. It's not that hard to see why we are second rate to them.
Oh, an Aussie. Yea, I only meant that to apply to Americans, I can't speak for the rest of the world's patent process, as I've never dealt with any.
Mea culpa for the lack of clarification.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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...
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)