[SirAlec]

!!Thanks to Google!!

~~Thanks to Gmail, Google knows who you are e-mailing, what you are saying and it will store all your e-mails forever.

~~Thanks to Google Talk, Google knows who you are talking to and who your closest associates are.

~~And if Gmail and Google Talk were not enough, because of Orkut, Google knows who sits in your circle of friends.

~~Thanks to Google Search, Google knows what you are searching for on the Web, including the news, type of images and newsgroup access.

~~Thanks to Google Video, Google knows what kind of risqué videos you like to watch.

~~Thanks to Google Finance, Google knows what stocks and businesses you are interested in.

~~Thanks to Blogger, Google knows what you rant about and what rants you like reading.

~~Thanks to Google Maps, Google knows where your house is and where you are going.

~~Thanks to Google Calendar, Google knows who you are meeting with, where you are going, and what you are busy doing.

~~Thanks to Picasa, Google even knows what you, your family, and your best friends look like.

~~Best of all, thanks to Google Desktop, Google has access to all your documents, images, files, and everything else on your hard drive.

~~And when Google displays customised adverts based on the e-mails you receive and searches you make, and you happen to click one of them, Google knows the kind of things you are interested in.

[androdev]

citibank having just my phone number is far worse than google having my entire life history :-)

not sure about google, but you should be *very* concerned if any of your friends work @ google. and i am not just saying that!

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by SirAlec

!Thanks to Google!!
~~Thanks to Gmail, Google knows who you are e-mailing, what you are saying and it will store all your e-mails forever.
...
...
...

So what? If you have something very confidential to be e-mailed or communicated, then use PGP.

This is some kind of phobia seen in people living in developed countries. They are a little too much worried about their privacy.

BTW, Google's privacy policy states that they won't read any e-mails, it will only be parsed by computers to decide on what 'context sensitive' ads can be shown on the sides.

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by clevermax

BTW, Google's privacy policy states that they won't read any e-mails, it will only be parsed by computers to decide on what 'context sensitive' ads can be shown on the sides.

computers are only as dumb as their programmers you know.

a case i can think of is when AOL leaked some search data which has searches from the same user about old age stuff, religious stuff (indicating a nun or something like that), AND some some novelty goods. it was very easy for people to figure out who it was by the small range of IPs it had.

think of all the porn you search (google), and then notice your email ID displayed on right top....it's scary sometime.

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

think of all the porn you search (google), and then notice your email ID displayed on right top....it's scary sometime.

Yes.. scary that is. Solution: Log out of google, clear cookies and then search!!

[greenhorn]

From The Magazine : Radar Online : Cory Doctorow imagines a world in which Google is evil

This story should be interesting

[SirAlec]

this was supposed to be a pun threat!

[mmmjgm]

Makes me wonder whether google really has that much manpower to really track every one's interactions on the web ?

The scary part is that since everything which is free does not come with any warranties or privacy agreements, things could be out there for the asking.

Cheers
Manish

[greenhorn]

but seriously, I find the amount of things google knows disturbing

PS : you forgot " thanks to orkut, google knows who you know"

[SirAlec]

Originally Posted by greenhorn

but seriously, I find the amount of things google knows disturbing

PS : you forgot " thanks to orkut, google knows who you know"

Third point, its mentioned!!

[tsk1979]

I am more worried about our newspaper wallah getting to know when we are out on vacation.
Thats more dangerous than anything google knows

[Sankar]

anil.org.in Blog Archive Google Knows

Quotes from the article...

When you run a search in Google for the first time in your browser, Google will set a Cookie with a unique ID in your browser. There after, Google knows that all the searches you are running are coming from “you” and presumably they keep record of them all.
So, based on the searches you run on Google, they can build a “picture” about you–what you want, what you do, what’s bothering you, your interests, hobbies, and probably what are you planning to do this weekend. May be, after God (”Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” –Hebrews 4:13), Google knows you best. Now closest friend of man is not his wife or even a human being any more; it is Google (or Internet search engines in general). People share the most private thoughts with Google.

An Email ID in Gmail is not like yet another ID in Hotmail or Yahoo. Each Email ID has the “genealogy” information attached to it. Each Gmail ID is created out of an invite sent out by an existing Gmail ID. So it is almost impossible to disguise yourself before Google. Besides knowing who you are, Google also knows whom you are related to. For example Google knows that you are Ram, husband of Meena and friend of John.

They are the best in the world for text parsing and analysing. And if we closely examine we can see that that makes the core of all their technologies. Google can even analyse your chat live. So think twice next time you chat with your friend on Google to discuss a new business idea or when you use Google Documents to type a new business plan. The point is that Google is a privacy bomb which can blow up any time either though a security breach or by the data mining bureaucrats of Washington.
Google, after handling trillions of queries from around the world by now, might have an interesting picture about the people in this world, I’m sure. Nobody has ever got a chance to see the world at such a macro level yet.

Maybe it's been time to start un associating from Google for you every web need. It's time to start detach and spread one's online identity.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

Simply having software from a particular company owned by one of the richest men on earth is still more dangerous and more invasive to your privacy.

And AFAICT, google employees have no means of reading your data. Not even sysadmins.

Google, after handling trillions of queries from around the world by now, might have an interesting picture about the people in this world, I’m sure. Nobody has ever got a chance to see the world at such a macro level yet.

That precisely why you can trust google. In google, collecting, parsing and analysing all that information is done by machines. And only use that information is put to is to throw ads at you.

If you have searched for holiday destinations, and are discussing upcoming holidays in an email, google will serve you up with an ad on discounted air fares.

The beauty of google is that you can always thwart google by using a mail client to read mail, a chat client to chat, and client software for most of their other services. True, google still may process the text, but they cannot make any use of it. Only use they put to it is to serve ads at you.

And doomsayers will never stop making their predictions. I usually ignore them.

When I am too concerned with privacy, I simply encrypt using receiver's gpg key.

[Sam Kapasi]

Honestly, when you live an open life - a YetiLife®, these silly things don't bother you.
You could find my whole life history on Team-BHP itself, who needs google?
And who cares who knows what about you. Who really does care whose husband you are and what porn you watch?
Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound offensive. But who really cares? Spammers? People who want to sell you viagra?

Who are you and I anyways in this world full of billions?

I agree with tsk actually. It is the people immediately around you that you should be worried about.

[lurker]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

Honestly, when you live an open life - a YetiLife®, these silly things don't bother you.
You could find my whole life history on Team-BHP itself, who needs google?
And who cares who knows what about you. Who really does care whose husband you are and what porn you watch?
Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound offensive. But who really cares? Spammers? People who want to sell you viagra?

Who are you and I anyways in this world full of billions?

I agree with tsk actually. It is the people immediately around you that you should be worried about.

It's very important for big corporations and Govts to know what their consumers are saying and thinking in private.

something like Google can aggregate all of this info together and present it in an organized form .. something that makes sense to people who need it.