3 ms·

keeping google and facebook's actions fully in the light is good (and stronger privacy laws would be great), but it continues to be rather intellectually dishon

keeping google and facebook's actions fully in the light is good (and stronger privacy laws would be great), but it continues to be rather intellectually dishonest to allude to that eric schmidt quote in this context. actually I think the recent twitter subpoena business showed him to be exactly right. hopefully no one was stupid enough to be conducting wikileaks business via twitter DMs: Q: People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be? A: I think judgement matters… If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.

Joakal 16y ago
Go to an cafe with no camera, use TOR, HTTPS, etc. But.. the thing with search engine terms is this: 1) Look up civil rights movement topics 2) Look at porn 3) Type up names of people you know out of curiosity 4) Type your own name 5) Look up medical conditions Each search term alone is pretty useless, but combine them all, there's a high likehood of search terms being associated to create a rudimentary profile on the fly. Consider that the above is a pretty weak example, the better example would be hundreds if not thousands of search terms relating to stuff of interest. Search programming topics all the time? User is programmer. Looking up porn too? User is programmer and porn searcher. etc. What it means? Google can return programming ads and porn ads which are highly relevant. The other issue is that if you accidentally put in certain pretty unique search terms, your profile becomes very unique. A friend who works at Google could read that you search porn often. Hence, privacy advocates are pretty concerned. I'm describing the AOL search engine debacle: http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2006/Aug/22/10208.html http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2006/Aug/22/10208.htm...
- angstrom 16y ago
  Maybe, but what's not in the electronic profile is just as important as what is. No facebook account? No phone record? No credit cards? Suspicous? Yes, if they're not homeless.
- Create 16y ago
  “Sir, calm down, please. No, I’m not looking at your searches,” the man said in a mocking whine. “That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I’ll give it to you when we’re through here.” http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html

Joakal 16y ago

Go to an cafe with no camera, use TOR, HTTPS, etc. But.. the thing with search engine terms is this: 1) Look up civil rights movement topics 2) Look at porn 3) Type up names of people you know out of curiosity 4) Type your own name 5) Look up medical conditions Each search term alone is pretty useless, but combine them all, there's a high likehood of search terms being associated to create a rudimentary profile on the fly. Consider that the above is a pretty weak example, the better example would be hundreds if not thousands of search terms relating to stuff of interest. Search programming topics all the time? User is programmer. Looking up porn too? User is programmer and porn searcher. etc. What it means? Google can return programming ads and porn ads which are highly relevant. The other issue is that if you accidentally put in certain pretty unique search terms, your profile becomes very unique. A friend who works at Google could read that you search porn often. Hence, privacy advocates are pretty concerned. I'm describing the AOL search engine debacle: http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2006/Aug/22/10208.html http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2006/Aug/22/10208.htm...

angstrom 16y ago
Maybe, but what's not in the electronic profile is just as important as what is. No facebook account? No phone record? No credit cards? Suspicous? Yes, if they're not homeless.
Create 16y ago
“Sir, calm down, please. No, I’m not looking at your searches,” the man said in a mocking whine. “That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I’ll give it to you when we’re through here.” http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html