Google and Invasion of Privacy

I know this isn't a new thing, but I am increasingly being scared by the invasive tendencies of google. It turns out Public Information Research has nominated Google, Inc. for corporate Big Brother of 2003. This is the 5th year that Privacy International has offered this award.

This is all from the Press Release:
Any member of the public can make their nominations before March 1. If you agree with us, please add your nomination for Google also, and put your reasons n the box provided by Privacy International so that their panel of judges can read them. Only about 60 seconds are needed to submit your nomination

Public Information Research, Inc., a nonprofit public charity, sponsors the following websites: http://www.google-watch.org, http://www.namebase.org,
http://www.cia-on-campus.org

Below are some reasons why we nominated Google. Privacy International will announce the decision of the panel of judges on April 3 at the
Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy in New York City. 1. Google's immortal cookie:

Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from
using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set
the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a
Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:

For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
3. Google retains all data indefinitely: Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and
save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf. Yes, it reads your
cookie too, and sends along the last search terms you used in the toolbar. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you phone home. Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be
illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page
on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," so by now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for
all external referrals to most websites. No webmaster can avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming he wants to increase
traffic to his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find
himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:

With 150 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.


This is kinda scary, I use google a lot, and I am not too sure what the search alternative is really. Thanks to my colleague Mike Evans for passing this along.

posted by sajit @ 2:53 PM