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>a legally enforceable document whereby companies promise to refrain from collecting, using, or sharing students’ personal information >This is not connected t

>a legally enforceable document whereby companies promise to refrain from collecting, using, or sharing students’ personal information >This is not connected to any specific person How can data not connected to any specific person be considered personal information? I mean what's bad here, the fact they collect it and then scrap the personal information? Or the fear they probably don't?

mtgx 11y ago
So you think that if law enforcement (from any country) knocks on Google's door, they will say "sorry, we can't provide that individual's data, because we collected it in aggregate"? Of course not. Google still has that individual's data and can personally identify him. It's just their policy not to use that data when using machine learning and whatnot to get a result out of it. Also, such "anonymized data" is never really anonymous, until Google starts using something like homomorphic enryption or client-side encrypted databases: De Montjoye and colleagues examined three months of credit card transactions for 1.1 million people, all of which had been scrubbed of any PII. Still, 90% of the time he managed to identify individuals in the dataset using the date and location of just four of their transactions. By adding knowledge of the price of the transactions, he increased “reidentification” (the academic term for spotting an individual in anonymized data) to 94%. Additionally, women were easier to reidentify than men, and reidentification ability increased with income of the consumer. https://hbr.org/2015/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-anonymous-data https://hbr.org/2015/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-anonymous-da... The problem is that Google gets that data in the first place and stores it - indefinitely. If someone hacks Google it could also get that data. And what's worse, instead of making it a company priority to "fix" this, it doesn't seem to care very much, even when the solutions could be within reach with a little more R&D: Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. “They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services,” he joked. http://www.wired.com/2013/10/computers-big-data/ http://www.wired.com/2013/10/computers-big-data/
- sukulaku 11y ago
  > It's just their policy not to use that data when using machine learning and whatnot to get a result out of it. So Google is like a child that wants to eat candy, has candy, but doesn't eat it? Of course they're using all the data they can, to the extent they can. They're just telling us there's no reason to worry, while they feed their data to the NSA's surveillance machinery etc. You see, Google is not the only "child with candy". Then there's the US government, and that kid has a ravenous appetite.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    That's pretty accurate. Google seems to have a huge fascination with collecting data, refuses to let us opt out of most of that data collection (without opting out of those services entirely), and then just expects us to 'trust them' that they aren't using it inappropriately.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      "Trust we're doing this" is basically what "Pledge" means.
- witty_username 11y ago
  I think Chrome Sync does support client-side encryption. I set an encryption password, and it seems to be client-side.

mtgx 11y ago

So you think that if law enforcement (from any country) knocks on Google's door, they will say "sorry, we can't provide that individual's data, because we collected it in aggregate"? Of course not. Google still has that individual's data and can personally identify him. It's just their policy not to use that data when using machine learning and whatnot to get a result out of it. Also, such "anonymized data" is never really anonymous, until Google starts using something like homomorphic enryption or client-side encrypted databases: De Montjoye and colleagues examined three months of credit card transactions for 1.1 million people, all of which had been scrubbed of any PII. Still, 90% of the time he managed to identify individuals in the dataset using the date and location of just four of their transactions. By adding knowledge of the price of the transactions, he increased “reidentification” (the academic term for spotting an individual in anonymized data) to 94%. Additionally, women were easier to reidentify than men, and reidentification ability increased with income of the consumer. https://hbr.org/2015/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-anonymous-data https://hbr.org/2015/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-anonymous-da... The problem is that Google gets that data in the first place and stores it - indefinitely. If someone hacks Google it could also get that data. And what's worse, instead of making it a company priority to "fix" this, it doesn't seem to care very much, even when the solutions could be within reach with a little more R&D: Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. “They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services,” he joked. http://www.wired.com/2013/10/computers-big-data/ http://www.wired.com/2013/10/computers-big-data/

sukulaku 11y ago
> It's just their policy not to use that data when using machine learning and whatnot to get a result out of it. So Google is like a child that wants to eat candy, has candy, but doesn't eat it? Of course they're using all the data they can, to the extent they can. They're just telling us there's no reason to worry, while they feed their data to the NSA's surveillance machinery etc. You see, Google is not the only "child with candy". Then there's the US government, and that kid has a ravenous appetite.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  That's pretty accurate. Google seems to have a huge fascination with collecting data, refuses to let us opt out of most of that data collection (without opting out of those services entirely), and then just expects us to 'trust them' that they aren't using it inappropriately.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    "Trust we're doing this" is basically what "Pledge" means.
witty_username 11y ago
I think Chrome Sync does support client-side encryption. I set an encryption password, and it seems to be client-side.