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Privacy concerns..part II

February 22, 2007 · Posted in Misc, Tech tidbit

I mentioned why MyBlogLog makes me uneasy due to privacy concerns. Along the same lines, for all you know, Google may be tracking & recording my every online move. Yes, I know I sound paranoid - but let me try to explain why.

Besides using Google for search, I use Orkut,Google Desktop Search, Google Toolbar, Google Maps, Google Finance, Google Reader, Google Sitemaps, Google Analytics and GMail. So, Google knows what I’m searching for (Search), who are in my network of friends, where I live (Maps), what stocks I’m interested in, what my stock portfolio looks like (Finance), what blogs and news sites I track regularly (Reader), what sites I own / host (Sitemaps and Analytics) and what emails I get and from whom (GMail).

Phew !!! They can pretty much capture and describe my lifestyle,likes-dislikes etc. to the T.

No matter how much Google emphasizes that they dont track and record all this data, I just dont feel comfortable about one company having access to such much of my personal data. Where ever possible, I choose to turn off the option where the service contacts Google servers for recommendations / reporting statistics etc. Example - The Google Toolbar - it has an option in the ‘Options’ menu which reads ‘Send usage statistics to Google’. By default, it is checked, but I choose to uncheck it and not have any statistics sent to Google.

Google announced the Google Apps Premier service yesterday. And Marshall (over at TechCrunch) highlights some of the reservations that businesses may have from using the Google Apps service:

Other skeptics have raised concerns about Googleâ€™s growing ubiquity and previously unfathomable access to information. Such power undoubtedly carries a political risk that no one can take lightly.

If you subscribe the TechMeMe, you would have noticed a lot of posts discussing this apprehension on behalf of the customers.

Any thoughts on this ?

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2 Responses to “Privacy concerns..part II”

SamY on February 23rd, 2007 9:31 pm

Strange you know! First we all look for a provider who integrates a lot of services. Wishing for all under the same hood :). Now that we are beginning to have one we feel its too much in the hands of one ;). Humans are so cynical :D.

IMHO most people don’t quite bother about being tracked that way since their footprint on the net is less. What google could get out of this mass as I see it is demographics. And some people I know use multiple accounts, one for personal and one for work purpose. There are ways to beat it.

Just imagine the number of users. Unless you are someone in the spotlight am not sure if someone / google would take the pain to track you and yours ;).

For businesses, its a different ball game. Esp. considering the confidentiality factor. But I feel at an individual level, its a bit cynical. Of course, i.e. unless you are worth tracking.

P.s: Not that I trust in google completely. I don’t like storing my CC info with google checkout / giving stats on usage as u put it ;D.
Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship » Blog Archive » Google quells privacy concerns on March 15th, 2007 1:07 pm

[...] Google finally has an answer to my privacy concerns. Google announced the purging or anonymising of web searches after a period of 18 to 24 months. [...]