If You Want Privacy, You're Obviously Hiding Something

[Rob Williams]

Those who know me well know that I try to stay away from Google products as much as possible. This includes its search engine, Web apps and so forth. The reason boils down to privacy, and the absolute lack of. If you use a Google service, including its search engine, the amount of data that it has on you is enormous. I have no doubt that Google has more bits of information on almost everyone than your respective government does. Isn't that a little weird?

You can read the rest of our news post here.

[Doomsday]

ok, i'm screwed! lol!

so any alternatives to google!?

i even searched the B*n-L***n guy!! bye bye USA trip!!

[Psi*]

you could be in the UK ... http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/sec...-move-you-make

Soooo ... this suggests to me that all the search engines would be doing the same? And, since the capability is in the UK, it is everywhere.

[2Tired2Tango]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

Those who know me well know that I try to stay away from Google products as much as possible. This includes its search engine, Web apps and so forth. The reason boils down to privacy, and the absolute lack of. If you use a Google service, including its search engine, the amount of data that it has on you is enormous. I have no doubt that Google has more bits of information on almost everyone than your respective government does. Isn't that a little weird?

How utterly hypocritical this is. Google's mission statement begins with "First of all do no harm." ...

Their Usenet archives have facilitated more stalkers than all the other online sites combined. Google Alerts are routinely used by stalkers to track their victim's online activities and it's only a matter of a couple of hours before they show up guns ablazing to defame and attack whenever anything new happens.

Frankly, I think Google is probably the world's biggest spy agency. They know stuff even the CIA can't track...

[Doomsday]

Originally Posted by 2Tired2Tango

Frankly, I think Google is probably the world's biggest spy agency. They know stuff even the CIA can't track...

aaye that be true!

[Brett Thomas]

That is a horrible, horrible concept that has been the idiotic view of the same people who BROUGHT us the Patriot Act.

"You'll only care if you're hiding something." No, I'm not hiding something, and guess what? STILL CARE.

Thing is, if the data they kept was totally anonymous (i.e., no identifying IPs) then I'd have NO problem with it. Actually, I don't even mind the IPs under the right reasons. I think it would be GREAT if marketing was a little more sensibly done and people could properly research and target products instead of throwing spam at a wall and seeing what sticks. Good research data is great, and if it gives me better products and better awareness of the products, that's a win for EVERYONE. I'm not anti-marketing, I'm anti-spam-i-don't-care-about.

But the idea that this data can be taken by anyone else and used for purposes outside of Google's scope is, to say the least, frightening. It makes me wish there was an alternative that could tell me they faithfully will not hand over that data if it's retained, as well as explaining what is retained and how it's disseminated to data miners. Unfortunately, there's no GPL search engine that I'm aware of...

[MacMan]

This is why I'm hoping that Bing, Hakia and Kartoo, among others, succeed and makes Google less important than what it is now. I don't think it's in societies best interest to allow only one company, or group, to control the market the way that Google now dominates, be that company Googe itself, or another gargantuan company like Microsoft, Apple, Sony or whom ever!

[2Tired2Tango]

Originally Posted by MacMan

This is why I'm hoping that Bing, Hakia and Kartoo, among others, succeed and makes Google less important than what it is now.

And what makes you think they are any better than Google?

[Doomsday]

my previous ISP had Dynamic IP.... was that better?! if they can't get a hold of ur IP, they cant keep track on u right?!

[2Tired2Tango]

Originally Posted by Doomsday

my previous ISP had Dynamic IP.... was that better?! if they can't get a hold of ur IP, they cant keep track on u right?!

That depends on the ISP and how often they cycle the IP addresses. On some you will get the same IP over and over for a month then it will change, on the good ones it will change every time you log in. But this does little good as they can back resolve from IP to user quite easily using reverse DNS lookups.

Try this page for an example... http://remote.12dt.com/

Of course setting your modem up with the "always on" option totally defeats that giving you a defacto fixed IP. You should always use "dial on demand" whenever possible.

But Google (et al) identify you by more than just your IP address. There's also tracking cookies planted by sites that any server can access and, of course, the little matter that browsers leak information like seives... Ip address, OS version, web client, screen resolution, cookie counts, etc. all handed to the server on every contact.