- thewhitehatter
Is Our Privacy Being Googled?
As of March 1st 2012, Your “Google profile” will include information taken from all Google services such as Android Smartphones, Gmail, Google+, and YouTube. Based on your browsing habits and even things like email conversations, Google will actively collect your information and your interests and sync it into one “profile,” or what we like to call a digital dossier, in such a way that we believe Google will be able to target you with better advertisements.
In our opinion, the only reason this is happening is so that our personal information; likes, dislikes, locations and search habits can be sold to third party vendors who can then “direct” their products specifically to our wants and needs. More importantly, it will allow Google to track our movement via Android mobile phones that many of us own. Have a read of their new privacy policy here:
http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
Of great interest, and I quote here:
“When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signal sent by a mobile device. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example provide information on nearby WiFi access points and cell towers.”
I love social networking and the internet, but I have never been as concerned as I am today about the erosion it is now having on our privacy. The freedom and the leveling of the playing field that the internet offered us individuals once upon a time, is now being controlled by large web companies whose only interest is making a profit for their shareholders knowing that their services are no longer a convenience, but rather a necessity in today’s real world. Although I believe in capitalism and the open and free market, I do not support it at the expense of my privacy that is now under direct attack online.
Digital Food For Thought
Darren Laur
AKA #thewhitehatter