Google's new "terms of service" and "privacy policy"

So, March 1 the new google will appear, linking every user ID you've used on one of their sites together, creating a profile of you (apart from your google profile) that will be marketed to and spammed to until you finally get sick of it and leave. This is right after they're caught placing tracking cookies on ios devices that are signed in google, and every functioning Android phone on the market. Thoughts?

http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/preview/

don't leave yourself signed in to their services, and use Ghostery to help block tracking cookies, google analytics and so on.

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:13 PM, Rubin Farr said:

So, March 1 the new google will appear, linking every user ID you've used on one of their sites together, creating a profile of you (apart from your google profile) that will be marketed to and spammed to until you finally get sick of it and leave. This is right after they're caught placing tracking cookies on ios devices that are signed in google, and every functioning Android phone on the market. Thoughts?

 

http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

 

http://www.google.co...rivacy/preview/

stop using the internet.

the thought that first springs to mind, is that this kind of stuff happens so incrementally that people don't notice in real-time how it will effect the way they behave. The chilling effect will just become more pervasive, people will have to be anonymous to feel 'private'. We're hitting a pretty shitty era in human privacy

john turley sums up how privacy is dying and what that means for society perfectly in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slOmhjiRNFE

a mindset that makes no sense to me is an all or nothing type of viewpoint, where if you complain about increasing erosions of privacy to certain people they will have an extremely fatalistic apathy about it. It's too bad because without the general public complaining about it, its just going to get worse

Yeah, it sucks monkey balls. But I don't know if I care anymore, because the world is shit anyway.

inb4 ET

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:15 PM, chenGOD said:

don't leave yourself signed in to their services, and use Ghostery to help block tracking cookies, google analytics and so on.

Never heard of Ghostery. I'll give it a try because I'm getting increasingly paranoid about the internet.

I just found out about it last week myself. It's a nice addition to AdBlockPlus.

Awepittance - there's a huge difference between google abusing its power and the government abusing its power though.

and for anyone who wants to stop using google as a search engine - duckduckgo is what you need :)

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:38 PM, chenGOD said:

I just found out about it last week myself. It's a nice addition to AdBlockPlus.

 

and for anyone who wants to stop using google as a search engine - duckduckgo is what you need :)

Ha, on watmm it blocks Google and some other thing, awesome.

I have duckduckgo as an alternate search engine, but it kind of sucks. I've heard good things about blekko, but it looks moderately complicated.

http://blekko.com/

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:38 PM, chenGOD said:

 

Awepittance - there's a huge difference between google abusing its power and the government abusing its power though.

To me it doesn't matter who is pushing the erosion of privacy, it's happening through the use of surveillance technologies utilized by private industry and government. The 2 happening at once is what concerns me, not one or the other.

the net effect, a chilling effect on the way humans behave will happen regardless if it is a corporation or a government inducing it

the concept that Google already 'scans' your emails using an algorithm to determine your likes and interests is already very strange to me. How is it ok if a robot/algorithm violates your privacy? there seems to have been no public debate of any kind about that, it's just totally accepted.

Can't believe I didn't actually read through the new TOS before now. WOW, that shit is retarded...

is a google search private?

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:31 PM, Enter a new display name said:

inb4 ET

they've got him already

Ive had ghostry for a while. A bit pointless seeing as I use chrome.

Listen, if someone has to have my info Id prefer it to be google. And I dont really care anymore anyway.

just curious, why dont you guys care anymore? Do you just think its an uphill battle that can never be won?

Pretty much. Also, Im not that interesting.

  On 2/20/2012 at 11:30 PM, Awepittance said:

just curious, why dont you guys care anymore? Do you just think its an uphill battle that can never be won?

Oh, the apathy. :/

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:54 PM, chenGOD said:

is a google search private?

No.

http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/faq/

just don't put yer secrets on the internet.

use internet, be happy.

So, the internet is becoming an infinite billboard based on personal usage?

  On 2/20/2012 at 10:15 PM, chenGOD said:

don't leave yourself signed in to their services, and use Ghostery to help block tracking cookies, google analytics and so on.

hey guys. i was wondering if you could help me out with this.

is there a way to download all the emails i've ever received on gmail as text files or something? i tried to do this over the summer with mozilla's email client but it only downloaded in increments of 1000 emails at a time and i have a shit ton more than that.

if anyone could provide me with instructions and a reliable program, i'd be soooo incredibly grateful. google has terrible customer service and i'm really worried about losing my account randomly because i did not provide my real name or some bullshit excuse like that. i don't want 20000 emails to disappear because of that.

thanks.

By this time googol has so much information, the amount itself actually makes your information safer. The odds of someone actually looking at your private info is close to zero. And these analytical algorithms, I don't see much trouble in those. As long as you can opt out, you're fine, I guess. But you can opt out, can't you? But admittedly, my actual online footprint is negligible. So no worries.

  On 2/21/2012 at 12:59 AM, goDel said:

By this time googol has so much information, the amount itself actually makes your information safer. The odds of someone actually looking at your private info is close to zero. And these analytical algorithms, I don't see much trouble in those. As long as you can opt out, you're fine, I guess. But you can opt out, can't you? But admittedly, my actual online footprint is negligible. So no worries.

BS, thats the resignation we're talking about... The odds of someone actually looking at my private info are completely random, if they have it, they can look at it, and also give it up to other entities.

2012!