Google’s got the market cornered on the virtual crystal
ball.
Between knowing our home, and work addresses and a list of
places we’ve been recently, to the people we talk to most often, and knowing
our heart’s deepest questions that we routinely try to erase from our browsers
and search histories, it’s an understatement to say that Google knows a lot
about us.
 |
| Burakfdu, Wordpress, 2013. |
Personally,
I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 Active that tells me each morning about the things
it thinks I need to know: the weather, how far I am from “Work,” when WVU plays
next, and updates me on where my recently ordered packages are. I barely have to think about what I want to
know when I wake up and it’s already there, thanks to Google’s…gently prying
nature.
It’s too
easy, isn’t it? To sign into a program
like Swarm or a Google Play game like Scramble with Friends using your Google+
profile. To get personal purchase
emails, letters, and pictures in your inbox.
To publish and manage your blog, all using your Google profiles. It’s a mindless process. What harm could there be in Google knowing
what we’re up to?
Andrew Keen said a mouthful in 2007 when he wrote, “Having
successfully become our personal librarian, Google now wants to be our personal
oracle. It wants to learn all about us, know us better than we know ourselves,
to transform itself from a search engine into a psychoanalyst's couch or a
priest's confessional” (Keen, 2007).
The article prophesizes about what Google wanted to be in 5
years (yes, that was 2012), and in it, the Google CEO says that he wants Google
to be able to answer “question[s] such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' And 'What
job shall I take?' (Keen 2007). It
can’t be done without getting to know us.
The future is just that, and is now. In 2007, Google wanted to offer a tightly knit suite of services: “personalized homepage, search engine, blog,
e-mail system, mini-program gadgets, Web-browsing history, etc. — that together
will create the world's most intimate information database. On iGoogle, we all
get to aggregate our lives, consciously or not, so artificially intelligent
software can sort out our desires” (Keen, 2007).
According
to Danny Dover at Moz.com, Google uses six different ways to collect data
(Dover, 2008).
·
Click
Tracking –
Google tracks ALL clicks on all of its services. If you use Chrome, then this includes all
clicks on all pages that aren’t Google, as well.
·
Forms – Google tracks all information entered into
forms, as well as the date and location where the information was submitted.
·
Cookies – Google puts cookies in your browser, which
are helpful for things like remaining signed in to Facebook, or preloading
other information. Google’s cookies (for
each of its services, including DoubleClick and AdSense) also track your
activity.
·
Server
Requests stored in Log Services – Every request made of a Google service is stored: searches,
submissions to blogs, requests for Google +1s, including:
o
IP
Address from user making request. This can be used to geo-locate the user
o
Date,
time, and time zone offset of user
o
Language
of requested result (in this case, English)
o
Search
query
o
Operating
system of user
o
Browser
of user
·
Javascript – just like the tracking code we’re embedding
in our websites. This tracks activity on
our pages, regardless of what browser the visitors are using.
·
Web
Beacons – I’m
quoting this because I can’t believe they need a dirty trick like this to get
information: “Google embeds small (1 pixel by 1 pixel) transparent .gifs into
many of its checkout screens. Just like the javascript, a user downloads the
invisible image and sends information about their computer to Google” (Dover,
2008).
Wow. Doesn’t seem like just your eBay purchase for
a Christmas Gift anymore, does it? Here’s
a complete list of all the personal information that Google admits to
collecting from internet users (MOZ.com, 2008).
It seems
as though the world got a bit nervous for a little bit, especially when Google
Street View really started to collect data in a heavy way – Germany even fined
Google for “Systematic, illegal collection of user data” (O’Brien, 2013) but
then really began to worry when Julian Assange revealed the link between the
company, its founders, and the U.S. Government (RT, 2014).
This
year, consumer feedback service Servata asked 2500 internet users in two
surveys how they felt about the National Security Agency (NSA) collecting user
data, and then about Google. Respondents
were more worried about Google’s data collection (on a scale of 1-10, they
averaged 7.06 for the NSA, and 7.39 for Google) (EndtheLie, 2014).
For a
long while when I started college, I was more than happy to share any kind of
information services like MySpace and Facebook (and even all the way back to
AOL Instant Messenger) asked for. It
shaped my open relationship with the internet through my early twenties and
made me comfortable with sharing more about myself than my parents were, that’s
for certain. When I became a public
figure as a television news and weather reporter, it made sense to make a
presence online that was well-branded…but I suddenly became very cautious about
what information I had online. After
three years of having my persona shared with a million households, I was ready
to recede from the internet – and almost did fully, back to the bare bones of
what I needed to run the City’s social media.
Over the
last year, I’ve become a little more lenient again, having realized that this
is just the norm. This is where we are
now. I’m not uncomfortable with my phone
telling me where my packages are each morning, or letting me know what the
score was of the Reds game I missed or who they play next, until I hear about
huge data breeches or hackers getting access to gmail passwords.
But…isn’t
that the way we feel about our home security when our neighbors’ house gets
robbed? We certainly are more aware of
it, but it’s the risk that comes with owning a house with things in it.
What experience with Google has shaped the way you feel
about the trade off of your privacy for your own “personal oracle”?
Burakfdu. (Mar 2013). Google Privacy JPG. Burakfdu.Wordpress.com. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://burakfdu.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/google-privacy.jpg.
Dover, Danny. (24
June 2008). The evil side of Google?
Exploring Google’s user data collection. Moz.com. Retrieved December 1,
2014, from http://moz.com/blog/the-evil-side-of-google-exploring-googles-user-data-collection.
EndTheLie. (24 Oct 2014). Google data collection worries
more Americans than NSA. EndTheLie.com. Retrieved
December 1, 2014, from http://endthelie.com/2014/10/29/google-data-collection-worries-americans-nsa/.
Keen, A. (12 July 2007). Is Google’s data grinder dangerous?
LATimes.com. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-keen12jul12-story.html.
MOZ. (2008). User Files: Google User Data. MOZ.com.
Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://moz.com/user_files/google-user-data/SEOmoz-Google-User-Data.pdf.
O’Brien, K. J. (22 Apr 2013). Germany fines Google over data
collection. NYTimes.com. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/technology/germany-fines-google-over-data-collection.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
RT. (24 Oct 2014). ‘Google grown big & bad':
Assange reveals company & its founder’s links to US govt. EndTheLie.com. Retrieved December
1, 2014, from http://endthelie.com/2014/10/29/google-data-collection-worries-americans-nsa/#qzdG9pLIxQhGYDZ5.99,
No comments:
Post a Comment