Google Agrees To Changes On Privacy

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Faced with mounting criticism over its privacy policies, Google has announced that it would limit the amount of time it keeps users' personal search data to 18 months.

The US internet group also said it would "radically redesign" its policy on keeping information from "cookies" or identifier programmes on individual computers. Google cookies are set to expire after 30 years but this could be cut down to just two in the face of European Union criticism.
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I keep hearing more and more negative reports about googles data holding/sharing practices. So much for their do no evil ethic. I have decided, reluctantly, to stop using their search engine and remove them as my default home page. Activism on the nano-scale.
 
jweller13 said:
I keep hearing more and more negative reports about googles data holding/sharing practices. So much for their do no evil ethic. I have decided, reluctantly, to stop using their search engine and remove them as my default home page. Activism on the nano-scale.
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What's evil about a company DESIGNED AROUND TARGETTING ADVERTISING collecting information to target advertisments? More importantly what's evil about collecting information? Just because some hippie is crying that the "man" is watching him doesn't make it evil.
 
Nemesis999 said:
What's evil about a company DESIGNED AROUND TARGETTING ADVERTISING collecting information to target advertisments? More importantly what's evil about collecting information? Just because some hippie is crying that the "man" is watching him doesn't make it evil.
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You're entitled to your opinion about google's practices and it is not my concern what you think.
 
Nemesis is correct. Google was created for this.

People needs an ability to search for things. Whats Google going to do? Pull out a crystal ball and go "the magic 8 ball says.."?

No. In order to get information, they have to find information first. They're EXPECTED to so WE don't have to.

You may as well cry that the government has information on every single living (legal) person in your country. They have the information because they're expected to have them.

Oh noes McDonalds support murdering cows and chicken. *roll eyes*
 
It's not the data that is necessarily bad, it's just that it's terrible to have searches that are "tracable" back to individual computers, it does lead to the possibility of abuse. Imagine the FBI (or whatever is the British equivalent :p ) showing up because they finally found some search they had flagged as "bad" or "illegal" 3 years ago. That could, at least in the US, have free speech implications.

As far as local cookies, sheesh, those are the least of the worries people should have these days, it's not that difficult to just purge them.
 
UrielDagda said:
It's not the data that is necessarily bad, it's just that it's terrible to have searches that are "tracable" back to individual computers, it does lead to the possibility of abuse. Imagine the FBI (or whatever is the British equivalent :p ) showing up because they finally found some search they had flagged as "bad" or "illegal" 3 years ago. That could, at least in the US, have free speech implications.

As far as local cookies, sheesh, those are the least of the worries people should have these days, it's not that difficult to just purge them.
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On the other hand Google has agressively and sucessfully fought to keep that data OUT of the hands of the government. Besides, the government isn't going after Google to keep themselves from getting data.
 
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