6 ms·

I'm curious how the author knows that it "does nothing". It seems that the argument ends with "because they can" we can "rest assured" that it "is exactly what

by zmmmmm 12y ago

I'm curious how the author knows that it "does nothing". It seems that the argument ends with "because they can" we can "rest assured" that it "is exactly what they’ll be doing". In other words, if you already have a certainty that Google is pure evil then you can extrapolate from that that they will do the most evil possible thing in every circumstance, including this one. That's not terribly profound. The entire rest of the post is a litany of ways by which Google can see your cookies, which has little to do with what they DO with that information, which is what the user account setting purports to affect. (to be clear, I have no evidence either whether they continue to track and store web history or not, but it doesn't seem like the author does either, and it's disappointing to see such a baseless trashy post from someone who I have in rather high esteem in general).

jacquesm 12y ago
Let's turn that around for a bit. The default assumption that I have is that advertising companies that deal in user profiles (such as Google) will collect everything they can about you because this benefits their ability to sell advertising. Google's terms of service states what they capture, in other words no matter what their user interface is telling you their privacy policy (which I consider to be the leading document in cases like these) tells a totally different story and and generalizes to all of google's services, including search (they even use that as the example of what they capture). The fact that things like cookies are in those logs that they do make (again, according to the privacy policy) makes it trivial to re-construct the data that they ostensibly do not keep. If it is trivial, makes good business sense, enhances the value of the profile and makes more money then you can bet dollars to donuts that unless there are strong statements to the contrary from the company involved that they do not engage in such behaviour that they do. Privacy policies are generally written in favour of the company writing them and it would be terribly naive to assume that if it could be written more strict but wasn't that this is an accident or oversight. Note how long google fought the EU commission to have any limits set on their permission to retain user data, and how they tried to spin it as a user benefit when they eventually caved in. So if google re-writes their privacy police to state explicitly that they do not datamine their logs and that the data is used only in a statistical sense and never in a personally identifiable sense then I would agree with you (and I would even believe them), but until they do it is fairly safe to assume that they in fact do use that information. Of course 'only to enhance your user experience' and never to improve the bottom line for google.
- magicalist 12y ago
  That's really just begging the question again, though. It's also not correct, as their privacy policy doesn't state that they always collect a cookie per log entry, for instance, but that they may. This is an important distinction, because in practice, at least things like doubleclick and analytics requests do not transmit your google account cookie. In a quick test, google fonts and google hosted libraries don't appear to send any cookies at all, though I don't know if that's true under all circumstances. There's much you could reconstruct from IP addresses and connection patterns if you were sufficiently motivated, but that's a long way from extrapolating from their privacy policy. Regardless, assuming "they can, therefore they will" isn't nearly sufficient here.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    At absolutely zero cost to themselves and good PR as a benefit google could re-write their privacy policy if that were the case. Note that they still have not amended their privacy policy to the effect that they indeed anonymize the log files after 9 months, even though they announced that they would do that years ago. So no, short of going to work for google or an insider coming up with hard proof there is not much to be done there. But with a privacy policy that details what they do log and a strong financial motive I have little doubt that this is an accurate representation of what's happening. If it isn't then google is free to contradict it.
    - magicalist 12y ago
      > At absolutely zero cost to themselves and good PR as a benefit google could re-write their privacy policy if that were the case I just gave you clear examples where that wasn't the case, examples you can verify yourself by inspecting the requests. > Note that they still have not amended their privacy policy to the effect that they indeed anonymize the log files after 9 months, even though they announced that they would do that years ago. here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/162743 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/162743 "We anonymize this log data by removing part of the IP address (after 9 months) and cookie information (after 18 months). If you have Web History enabled, this data may also be stored in your Google Account until you delete the record of your search." > But with a privacy policy that details what they do log... I don't understand why you're ignoring the very important distinction between of "do log" and logs "may include".
pessimizer 12y ago
>if you already have a certainty that Google is pure evil This is a straw man. Google may not think that doing something that is legal and common is evil, and why are we having theological discussions anyway? You will have information on what Google is doing with your information when Google volunteers that information. Unless they deny usage in a legally binding sense, there's no reason why you should expect to see any further information about how that data is used internally. What you do know is: 1) that there will be no public relations consequence for breaking users' trust, because what they do with what their records is not transparent, and 2) that it's legal and common to use any information gathered about you in just about any way. You can either assume they'll do what you have indicated that you prefer with the data, even if that likely involves leaving money on the table - or you can assume that they will generally do what they're legally obligated to do, and within that, attempt to maximize profits. IMO, the former position involves imagining that a company has a personality, and doesn't want to take advantage of you. It's a false equivalence to assert that the latter (a company legally maximizing its resources for profit) involves a similar leap of imagination. You're not going to get information either way about what they DO until Google publicly obligates themselves with a policy document, or somebody leaks.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > 2) that it's legal and common to use any information gathered about you in just about any way. That depends what jurisdiction you're in. Law is what's on the books and how the regulators and courts interpret what's on the books. It's possible Google's lawyers are saying that some process is compliant with law when the regulators and courts may have a different interpretation.
higherpurpose 12y ago
It does nothing just like Google's own DNT option in Chrome does nothing to its own web properties. It's almost like Google is begging for this sort of stuff to turn into regulations against them, because clearly they can't be trusted to do the right thing.

by zmmmmm 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

Let's turn that around for a bit. The default assumption that I have is that advertising companies that deal in user profiles (such as Google) will collect everything they can about you because this benefits their ability to sell advertising. Google's terms of service states what they capture, in other words no matter what their user interface is telling you their privacy policy (which I consider to be the leading document in cases like these) tells a totally different story and and generalizes to all of google's services, including search (they even use that as the example of what they capture). The fact that things like cookies are in those logs that they do make (again, according to the privacy policy) makes it trivial to re-construct the data that they ostensibly do not keep. If it is trivial, makes good business sense, enhances the value of the profile and makes more money then you can bet dollars to donuts that unless there are strong statements to the contrary from the company involved that they do not engage in such behaviour that they do. Privacy policies are generally written in favour of the company writing them and it would be terribly naive to assume that if it could be written more strict but wasn't that this is an accident or oversight. Note how long google fought the EU commission to have any limits set on their permission to retain user data, and how they tried to spin it as a user benefit when they eventually caved in. So if google re-writes their privacy police to state explicitly that they do not datamine their logs and that the data is used only in a statistical sense and never in a personally identifiable sense then I would agree with you (and I would even believe them), but until they do it is fairly safe to assume that they in fact do use that information. Of course 'only to enhance your user experience' and never to improve the bottom line for google.

magicalist 12y ago
That's really just begging the question again, though. It's also not correct, as their privacy policy doesn't state that they always collect a cookie per log entry, for instance, but that they may. This is an important distinction, because in practice, at least things like doubleclick and analytics requests do not transmit your google account cookie. In a quick test, google fonts and google hosted libraries don't appear to send any cookies at all, though I don't know if that's true under all circumstances. There's much you could reconstruct from IP addresses and connection patterns if you were sufficiently motivated, but that's a long way from extrapolating from their privacy policy. Regardless, assuming "they can, therefore they will" isn't nearly sufficient here.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  At absolutely zero cost to themselves and good PR as a benefit google could re-write their privacy policy if that were the case. Note that they still have not amended their privacy policy to the effect that they indeed anonymize the log files after 9 months, even though they announced that they would do that years ago. So no, short of going to work for google or an insider coming up with hard proof there is not much to be done there. But with a privacy policy that details what they do log and a strong financial motive I have little doubt that this is an accurate representation of what's happening. If it isn't then google is free to contradict it.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    > At absolutely zero cost to themselves and good PR as a benefit google could re-write their privacy policy if that were the case I just gave you clear examples where that wasn't the case, examples you can verify yourself by inspecting the requests. > Note that they still have not amended their privacy policy to the effect that they indeed anonymize the log files after 9 months, even though they announced that they would do that years ago. here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/162743 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/162743 "We anonymize this log data by removing part of the IP address (after 9 months) and cookie information (after 18 months). If you have Web History enabled, this data may also be stored in your Google Account until you delete the record of your search." > But with a privacy policy that details what they do log... I don't understand why you're ignoring the very important distinction between of "do log" and logs "may include".

pessimizer 12y ago

>if you already have a certainty that Google is pure evil This is a straw man. Google may not think that doing something that is legal and common is evil, and why are we having theological discussions anyway? You will have information on what Google is doing with your information when Google volunteers that information. Unless they deny usage in a legally binding sense, there's no reason why you should expect to see any further information about how that data is used internally. What you do know is: 1) that there will be no public relations consequence for breaking users' trust, because what they do with what their records is not transparent, and 2) that it's legal and common to use any information gathered about you in just about any way. You can either assume they'll do what you have indicated that you prefer with the data, even if that likely involves leaving money on the table - or you can assume that they will generally do what they're legally obligated to do, and within that, attempt to maximize profits. IMO, the former position involves imagining that a company has a personality, and doesn't want to take advantage of you. It's a false equivalence to assert that the latter (a company legally maximizing its resources for profit) involves a similar leap of imagination. You're not going to get information either way about what they DO until Google publicly obligates themselves with a policy document, or somebody leaks.

DanBC 12y ago
> 2) that it's legal and common to use any information gathered about you in just about any way. That depends what jurisdiction you're in. Law is what's on the books and how the regulators and courts interpret what's on the books. It's possible Google's lawyers are saying that some process is compliant with law when the regulators and courts may have a different interpretation.

higherpurpose 12y ago

It does nothing just like Google's own DNT option in Chrome does nothing to its own web properties. It's almost like Google is begging for this sort of stuff to turn into regulations against them, because clearly they can't be trusted to do the right thing.