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FTC Releases Google Privacy Audit, Blacks Out the Details
chicksdaddy writes "Google could tell you about its privacy practices except, well....they're private. That's the conclusion privacy advocates are drawing after the Federal Trade Commission took a black marker to an independent audit of the company's privacy practices before releasing it to the group EPIC in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Security Ledger is reporting that the FTC released a copy of a Price Waterhouse Coopers audit of Google that was mandated as part of a settlement with the FTC over complaints following a 2010 complaint by EPIC over privacy violations in Google Buzz, a now-defunct social networking experiment. However, the agency acceded to Google requests to redact descriptions of the search giant's internal procedures and the design of its privacy program."
We must assume the worse.. that Google's 'privacy practices' are hogwash. You have no privacy with Google. Let them prove otherwise.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you're an advertiser, privacy is evil. And since google doesn't wish to be evil, they have to black out all the privacy stuff. It makes total sense.
Interesting, the report specifies that user data is 1 of 3 types,
- Log data (user activity)
- Account data (Users emails, settings, etc)
- Third type is redacted.. Wonder what it is
One is a huge, evil organization that is spying on you with massive server farms, and the other doesn't have nuclear weapons.
...We can safely assume the blacked-out information would hurt both the government and Google to varying degrees. So now what to do about it?
IMHO, the most effective personal strategy is to simply avoid using Google search and associated services. There ARE other services out there.
https://www.ixquick.com/
For one example of a free service that emphasizes privacy and anonymity.
Deprive both Google and the government of the very data they are collecting that gives them more power. Well, at least until they make it illegal to not reveal data.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
...is that the government cares more about Google's privacy than our own.
Because according to Google's Eric Schmidt "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Google doesn't want us to know about it, so maybe be they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
[REDACTED]
Actually, I came across another sneaky way with which Google is gathering data: Google fonts.
It means Google gets a hit every time a website with a CSS layout using Google fonts because it needs to call the fonts API to get them..
Insert
This is pretty interesting - as of the time that I'm posting this, there are 41 comments and almost no moderation on this story. I regularly see stories posted at 10PM pacific and wake up the next morning to see 200+ posts, but not in this case.
I suppose that we could say that this is just not really a story of interest. Perhaps, although before you make that argument, do you think that the comment count and moderation would be a little different if the headline had been:
FTC Releases Apple Privacy Audit, Blacks Out the Details