Google will now follow you around the internet, as you use e-mail, search, YoutTube, and so on and so forth, as you use web browsers or your Android phone, and you can't opt out. This starts March 1st.
I'm not sure if this is a bad thing or not. It depends on exactly what they are doing. It will certainly make the Google experience a bit creepier: As you search for YouTube videos on some topic, Google may make suggestions based on information on your Google Calendar, or if you have a business trip to a certain city on your Calendar, Google may suggest which of your circled contacts on Google+ might like to know you'll be in town.
From the Washington Post:
Privacy advocates say Google's changes betray users who are not accustomed to having their information shared across different Web sites.
A user of Gmail, for instance, may send messages about a private meeting with a colleague and may not want the location of that meeting to be thrown into Google's massive cauldron of data or used for Google's maps application
Click through to the Washington Post piece if you want to participate in a poll regarding your reaction to this. So far 53% of respond ants plant to cancel their Google accounts because of this policy, 22% will not cancel, and 26% are not sure.
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We are all just meat machines with no free will anyway, so what difference does it make if Google watches and helps?
Some of us think we are more than meat machines. Some of us also provide curly fur every spring, some of us provide milk, horn, or bone.
People need to realize that any piece of digital information they make public will be archived, and will remain open to subsequent automated mining, correlation, and analysis. The tools for that are becoming ever more sophisticated. Attempts to wall off different facets of one's digital persona likely will prove futile. Even if it works today, it won't work tomorrow, and the data persists. Which leads to the interesting question of whether Google or other company doing a little bit of that now is particularly evil, or just a harbinger of the ever greater transparency to come.
The notion of privacy is much different today than it was a half-century ago. That change is small, compared to what will happen in the next twenty years.
The University where I teach now has all student, faculty, and staff emails run by Google (although you keep you edu email address).
Yesterday I was emailing something to myself, and after I added my email address I was told of two people who I might include as CCs for that email. These were just some faculty members I'd emailed a few weeks ago.
I hadn't even posted any info in the main body of the text, but somehow the Google mind wanted me to add these people's address too. That is a bit creepy.
I usually assume this kind of thing is happening regardless. Why would anyone ever presume their internet activities are truly private. The government, internet thieves, and even advertisers can easily get the information about your online activities if they really want it anyway.
1. don't use gmail except as an account to be ref'd by google accounts
2. don't use any web based email for real email - live with the limitations
3. have multiple accounts - across the net use all of the competitive systems - try and keep how you use them random so there's no discernible pattern to how you use them
4. install Ghostery type blocker on your web browser and turn off all facebook and similar web page tracking
5. create a nome-de-plume not linked to any of your existing accounts and be that nom-de-plume instead of you
6. regularly change who you are
7. do not use any real personal information on any site especially social networking sites or better - do not use social networking sites at all - they are a huge scam and only idiots and shills use them
8. periodically cut yourself off from the net for a week to get things in perspective
9. do not habituate specific web sites eg blogs - install an RSS feed manager and use feed consolidation and lots of filtering then reduce the feeds to headlines only
10. do not accept social network invitations from anyone ever - reject all offers to "friend" etc
11. never register from your home computer to sites that require registration before you can gain access to something - live without it or use paid for content only
12. don't ever download anything that might not be legal
13. don't trust anyone at all ever - the worst scammers out there are not the ones the authorities tell you - the worst are big business and governments - by far
14. smart phone is cool right? Try living with a basic phone - you wont have long to do so because all phones will be smart soon and smarter than you because they will be permantly hooked into huge information processing systems. At that stage it might be worth not having a phone or frequently changing your SIM or hiring a phone from the soon to emerge phone hiring centers that will cater to the need of people to try and escape big brother google's constant 24/7 surveillance
at some stage everything that is free will bite you - so stock pile all the hard disks you can and enough spare parts to keep a computer running a long time - save as much as you think is valuable out of the cloud because one day the cloud will be far from free but there will be no options but to pay
at some stage the possession of a hard disk will be illegal
think i'm wrong?
pop
Here's what I really hate. On Goggle+ there are people I would really prefer to never "circle" or be circled by. Don't even want them breathing my air. But since there is an email to or from said individuals (I suppose) G+ keeps suggesting them to me. Google does not get it. On the other hand, as they increase their use of my data, perhaps Google will read those emails and figure out that I'd rather not see their muggs in my side bar every day.
I doubt very much that 53% of respondents will actually quit Google, or even 5.3%. Maybe 0.53%. I mean... it's Google.
Peak Oil Poet:
Yes.
i don't have a google+ account and i don't use gmail
I opted out months ago. I moved my personal blogspot blog to wordpress, I switched my default search provider and I never really used gmail for anything significant anyway. I do still watch youtube, but I if I had anything to post I'd find another home.
It's not the privacy thing that annoys me, it's the utter contempt that Google (amongst others) shows for us by essentially stating out loud that the only value our activities have is how much they can be sold for. All done in the razor-thin name of 'tailoring' recommendations for us.
And even that might actually be tolerable if the 'tailoring' actually made any sense whatsoever. In the middle of last year I bought a new (to me) car. Naturally I did a lot of research online. Five months after buying a vehicle I'm still bombarded with recommendations for Fords, Toyotas etc.
If I'm only supposed to have only one identity online what happens for a woman who finds out she is pregnant, does some research online. The next day she gives a presentation to the boss and bingo her search and browsing history is visible for all to see?
That's not a rhetorical question. My sister-in-law had to make sure no hint of her pregnancy leaked online last year.
Mike.
Peak Oil Poet:
Maybe that´s your problem:
It´s unsustainable, isn´t it?
Mike #10
Health information:
This is covered in the PP and TOS. Plus, you log out and search if you don't want anything associated with your identity, or adjust your Google settings or browser settings accordingly.
@#6 Peak Oil Poet
You forgot your tinfoil hat...