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> 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

by 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.

by sqeaky 9y ago

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.