Google privacy policy issues

Google Privacy Policy – A breach of privacy?

The search giant Google is taking steps to ensure that they are on song with the law enforcement and have stated new privacy laws for their products.The popular Google products like YouTube, Gmail also have not been spared by the privacy policy. In the Google privacy policy page one can find the details of the data they are going to collect from the users.

It says they are going to collect personal information such as name, email address, telephone no or credit card. Google will also be tracking your device data such as operating system, unique device identifiers and associate these information with your Google account.Google will also be collecting search queries of logged on users, your telephone log information, your Internet protocol address. They will also be collecting cookies to identify your browser or your Google account.

Also there will be location data collected when using location enabled Google services. They will be collecting GPS signals from mobile devices and sensor data to give information about nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.The other details mentioned they will be collecting are Local storage data like browser web storage and application data caches. Finally they mention they will be tracking cookie data from other sites using Google features.

Google further explains that the information they collect is to help them to provide better services to their users.

Any amount of explanation by them doesn’t seem to satisfy most of the countries. Most of them have requested Google to delay their privacy update. Even though Google claims that this act is for making the services better, the common man can see it as a breach of privacy.

How can someone be comfortable with their personal data like search queries involving their personal issues, sexual orientation and other confidential details being tracked. There have been a great number of countries opposing this act and recently in New York Times one could see the headline “France Says Google Privacy Plan Likely Violates European Law”. In the news article a line was quoted by the French privacy agency known as CNIL “Our preliminary investigation shows that it is extremely difficult to know exactly which data is combined between which services for which purposes, even for trained privacy professionals.”

The French privacy agency have the power to fine companies up to 400,000 $ for privacy breach.

The users of Android powered smart phones may have no other option but to ditch their phones to get away from the Google Privacy act as the policy involves mobile, OS tracking data to.

Privacy advocates have slammed Google that they are forcing users to share data which when given a choice they wouldn’t have. Also this move is being seen by many as an evil trick by Google to promote their ads to specific users based on their data tracking. While promoting their business is commendable, the promotion coming at the cost of user privacy really needs to be reconsidered again.

While the web is flowing with a range of updates requesting Google to get their privacy act delayed and Governments asking time to review them in detail. There seems to be no response from the other side.

One must also take into account the French are acting based upon the European commission instruction and they were assigned to do the initial check. So this law could go against the whole of Europe and many other countries around the world.

In addition to this based on a survey taken it was found that most Google users were not aware of the privacy policy, despite being promoted by Google in the past weeks. The survey also gives us the shocking census that only 1 in 8 users have gone and read the privacy policy of Google. The remaining 7 users are still ignorant of the change and are continuing using Google services.

Big Brother watch, a British civil liberties and privacy pressure group have called for an enquiry on the Google privacy law and how it complies with the British data protection law.

At this time we would like to Guide users on how to delete their web history before Google starts tracking it

Step 1: Login to your Gmail account

Step 2: At the top right corner of your screen you can view your email id, click on it

Step 3: Once you click on it, you will be displayed a dropdown and you can click on privacy if you would like to know the details of Google privacy or click on account settings

Step 4: In account settings you will have a section called services and you will have the text “View, enable, or disable web history” parallel to it you can find the linked text Go to web history

Step 5: On clicking that link you will have the option to remove all web history

There is also another face of this privacy act with Google having data that many countries have requested user data to be handed over and also had asked Google to block services or remove data that they found to be affecting their country.

January – June 2011

China
Three requests to remove 121 items from services. Google removed ads in response to two of those requests.

Cook Islands
Google received content removal requests

France
User data requests recorded an increase of 29% compared with the previous reporting period of Google

Germany
User data requests recorded an increase of 39% compared with the previous reporting period of Google

Russia
User data requests reached the reporting threshold at Google

South Korea
User data requests recorded an increase of 36% compared with the previous reporting
Period of Google

Spain
User data requests recorded an increase of 28% compared with the previous reporting period of Google

USA
User data requests recorded an increase of 29% compared with the previous reporting period of Google

You can find detailed reports for previous years to in the Google transparency report page.

This data seems to be arousing a lot of interesting debates as if countries oppose user data collection by Google and later on request Google for user data then the whole process would need to be talked over by individual Governments.

Even as many feel that this may hurt their online privacy, the Google official blog states that Google still remains committed to data liberation and also that they don’t sell your information, or share it externally without the user’s permission unless in dire consequences like a court order.

Given all these facts and details how Google are going to cope with privacy laws of nation and how users are going to react to it will be one of the modern day dramas to unfold online soon.

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