4 ms·

Does the automated nature of the permanent data collection change anything? How about an automated drone with a camera mounted on it that follows you everywhere

by ksk 9y ago

Does the automated nature of the permanent data collection change anything? How about an automated drone with a camera mounted on it that follows you everywhere and records every action, indefinitely, purely automated ofcource, so that an advertising company can helpfully remind you about the awesome great $6 lunch menu when you walk past McBurger at lunchtime, or about picking up some hemorrhoids cream from MediCo because a machine learning algorithm saw you scratch your butt and deduced something.

Ajedi32 9y ago
Depends. Is that drone providing me with some other useful service, or is it following me around entirely without my knowledge or consent? Gmail provides me with a free email service. They already have the full text of all my emails. If they want to use that data to help decide what ads to serve me, I have no problem with that so long as that data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  > data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent Do you have any way of verifying this? I am not accusing google of anything, I just find this to be an interesting level of trust to have with a free online service.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    Google is a large, generally reputable company which has very little to gain and everything to lose by sharing my personal information with others in violation of their own privacy policy. In the absence of any evidence that they _are_ sharing my private information with others, I see no reason not to trust them in this regard.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      I use GMail for similar reasons, they are reputable, but I have no expectation they won't share my data once it makes financial sense.
    - pdkl95 9y ago
      > everything to lose Really? Good luck suing them if they decide to sell your data. They certainly won't lose much revenue from fleeing customers if they think up a creative new way to monetize your data with "select business partners"; Google (and Facebook et al) spent the last decade entrenching themselves infrastructure for far too many people. They have far too much power and inertia to lose much in the short or medium term. > trust them Privacy policies change. Even if Google has good intentions about protecting your data today, you're gambling that those intentions will not change in the future. You don't know who will be hired/fired at Google in the future, nor do you know how the current (or any) management will react should the company have a particularly unfortunate run of bad finances or other troubles. Never-mind that humans often act irrationally for stupid reasons so any prediction about future behavior has to have a huge error bar. However, that isn't the big problem with trusting Google to not share your pattern-of-life[1] with a 3rd party: you're assuming it will be Google's choice, or that they will even have any de facto influence over the long-term fate of your personal information. Your trust doesn't make Google infallible; the best security teams can only make hacks less likely. Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen. Prism (and other mass surveillance programs) still exist. Concentrating valuable data at one location makes it more valuable, so the scope of potential threats to your data increases as more data is collected. The world is not as just[2]. Trusting that your data will magically stay safe at Google forever - or even just the near future - is only possible if you first pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect, that the programs Snowden/Drake/Binney/etc warned us about never existed, that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled (or crazy), and probably many more potential threats that haven't been invented yet. [1] or mundane data like your email [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
      - Ajedi32 9y ago
        > They certainly won't lose much revenue from fleeing customers I don't think that's true. Sure, they wouldn't be out of business overnight, but depending on how serious this hypothetical breach of trust is, it'd certainly hurt them a lot. > Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen My threat model does not currently include the NSA or the US government. I don't anticipate that changing in the near future, but if it does then you're right; I'll certainly need to stop using Google services. (And probably all cloud services in general.) Or at least "air gap" them from the portions of data I want to keep secret. > pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect [...] that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled While I consider myself to be more security conscious than the average citizen, I _still_ trust Google's security practices (against both internal and external threats) far more than I trust my own. If my data on Google's services gets compromised, I think it's far more likely that it'll be because someone stole my password and 2FA tokens than because somebody hacked Google. As with anything, I realize there's certainly a security/usability tradeoff to be made. For the moment though I'm quite confident that the extra utility Google provides is worth the risk, at least for my purposes.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      Even though they've given some people's info away already to at least the US government? That just seems silly
  - obmelvin 9y ago
    Google's entire business relies on maintaining this user trust. They have far more to lose than to gain by betraying user trust.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I am curious about the downvotes. Do we really downvote people here for questioning trusting Google? I didn't even say not to trust google, I just questioned the level of trust.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      Meh, people do that here, not sure why. But to answer your question: no, there's not. Google has already secretly given people's info away. They've admitted to getting and complying with NSL's already.
    - ionised 9y ago
      You'd be surprised. It's a common phenomenon across a variety of social media when a certain few companies are questioned on their practices. It's all very tribal.
- ksk 9y ago
  But your profile is not just linked with Gmail. Its across Google, including any future products. Its a kind of cross-product tying using customer data (which gives them an easy leg-up on new ad-subsidized products) that I would assume attracts anti-trust scrutiny. I think its fair for you to accept the terms, if you know what you're getting in return. The problem here is that you will never know exactly what information is stored about you, and how personal it is, and you have zero control over it. Also simply by sending YOU an email, I'm also entangled in the data collection scheme.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    > The problem here is that you will never know exactly what information is stored about you, and how personal it is, and you have zero control over it. On the contrary. I know what emails are stored in my inbox just as well as Google does. I can also search through that information and delete it if I so choose, so I do have control over it.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      You can remove your access to that data. Theres no indication that said data is actually deleted. They also have a lot more information about you than just your email, especially if you use their search.

by ksk 9y ago

Ajedi32 9y ago

Depends. Is that drone providing me with some other useful service, or is it following me around entirely without my knowledge or consent? Gmail provides me with a free email service. They already have the full text of all my emails. If they want to use that data to help decide what ads to serve me, I have no problem with that so long as that data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent.

sqeaky 9y ago
> data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent Do you have any way of verifying this? I am not accusing google of anything, I just find this to be an interesting level of trust to have with a free online service.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  Google is a large, generally reputable company which has very little to gain and everything to lose by sharing my personal information with others in violation of their own privacy policy. In the absence of any evidence that they _are_ sharing my private information with others, I see no reason not to trust them in this regard.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I use GMail for similar reasons, they are reputable, but I have no expectation they won't share my data once it makes financial sense.
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    > everything to lose Really? Good luck suing them if they decide to sell your data. They certainly won't lose much revenue from fleeing customers if they think up a creative new way to monetize your data with "select business partners"; Google (and Facebook et al) spent the last decade entrenching themselves infrastructure for far too many people. They have far too much power and inertia to lose much in the short or medium term. > trust them Privacy policies change. Even if Google has good intentions about protecting your data today, you're gambling that those intentions will not change in the future. You don't know who will be hired/fired at Google in the future, nor do you know how the current (or any) management will react should the company have a particularly unfortunate run of bad finances or other troubles. Never-mind that humans often act irrationally for stupid reasons so any prediction about future behavior has to have a huge error bar. However, that isn't the big problem with trusting Google to not share your pattern-of-life[1] with a 3rd party: you're assuming it will be Google's choice, or that they will even have any de facto influence over the long-term fate of your personal information. Your trust doesn't make Google infallible; the best security teams can only make hacks less likely. Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen. Prism (and other mass surveillance programs) still exist. Concentrating valuable data at one location makes it more valuable, so the scope of potential threats to your data increases as more data is collected. The world is not as just[2]. Trusting that your data will magically stay safe at Google forever - or even just the near future - is only possible if you first pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect, that the programs Snowden/Drake/Binney/etc warned us about never existed, that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled (or crazy), and probably many more potential threats that haven't been invented yet. [1] or mundane data like your email [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      > They certainly won't lose much revenue from fleeing customers I don't think that's true. Sure, they wouldn't be out of business overnight, but depending on how serious this hypothetical breach of trust is, it'd certainly hurt them a lot. > Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen My threat model does not currently include the NSA or the US government. I don't anticipate that changing in the near future, but if it does then you're right; I'll certainly need to stop using Google services. (And probably all cloud services in general.) Or at least "air gap" them from the portions of data I want to keep secret. > pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect [...] that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled While I consider myself to be more security conscious than the average citizen, I _still_ trust Google's security practices (against both internal and external threats) far more than I trust my own. If my data on Google's services gets compromised, I think it's far more likely that it'll be because someone stole my password and 2FA tokens than because somebody hacked Google. As with anything, I realize there's certainly a security/usability tradeoff to be made. For the moment though I'm quite confident that the extra utility Google provides is worth the risk, at least for my purposes.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    Even though they've given some people's info away already to at least the US government? That just seems silly
- obmelvin 9y ago
  Google's entire business relies on maintaining this user trust. They have far more to lose than to gain by betraying user trust.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  I am curious about the downvotes. Do we really downvote people here for questioning trusting Google? I didn't even say not to trust google, I just questioned the level of trust.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    Meh, people do that here, not sure why. But to answer your question: no, there's not. Google has already secretly given people's info away. They've admitted to getting and complying with NSL's already.
  - ionised 9y ago
    You'd be surprised. It's a common phenomenon across a variety of social media when a certain few companies are questioned on their practices. It's all very tribal.
ksk 9y ago
But your profile is not just linked with Gmail. Its across Google, including any future products. Its a kind of cross-product tying using customer data (which gives them an easy leg-up on new ad-subsidized products) that I would assume attracts anti-trust scrutiny. I think its fair for you to accept the terms, if you know what you're getting in return. The problem here is that you will never know exactly what information is stored about you, and how personal it is, and you have zero control over it. Also simply by sending YOU an email, I'm also entangled in the data collection scheme.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  > The problem here is that you will never know exactly what information is stored about you, and how personal it is, and you have zero control over it. On the contrary. I know what emails are stored in my inbox just as well as Google does. I can also search through that information and delete it if I so choose, so I do have control over it.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    You can remove your access to that data. Theres no indication that said data is actually deleted. They also have a lot more information about you than just your email, especially if you use their search.