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DIG DIRECTOR
Mark Malseed is coauthor of "The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time," an international bestseller that is being published in 17 languages worldwide.
Formerly a researcher to Bob Woodward for the books "Plan of Attack" and "Bush at War," Malseed contributes to numerous online and offline publications, including The Washington Post. |
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In Google, Yahoo, Should We Trust?A Dig led by Mark MalseedIt’s time we started asking better questions about our queries. An unsettling reality has begun to descend on the millions of fans and devotees of the Internet giants Google and Yahoo: They know an awful lot about us. Every Google search ever typed, every Yahoo news article ever read—all are logged and stored indefinitely in these companies’ massive databases. Think about that for a moment. We whisper a lot into the ears of these shadowy search engines, including plenty of secrets that we’d want to keep from our spouses and kids. And we do so without ever bothering to check what is being done with that information. If you don’t already know, let me be the first to tell you: Google, Yahoo and their less-well-known brethren are keeping tabs on what is being searched, viewed and clicked on, all across their sprawling Web empires. You know all those e-mails you’ve sent using free services such as Yahoo Mail or Google’s Gmail? They are kept for posterity on company servers, even in cases when they have been deleted from users’ accounts. And instant messages? A new service from Google leaves a digital record long after the conversations have been forgotten. Driving directions? Not only do Google and Yahoo know the way to our intended destination, they also know that we probably made the trip. (We all but told them we were going, didn’t we?) Searches are not by default linked to our names—only to an Internet address or a unique browser ID. But armed with that information, investigators and sometimes the companies themselves can make the crucial link to our names and addresses.
Existing laws offer fewer protections for data and e-mail communications stored by a third party than for the contents of someone’s personal computer. And though there are gray areas in the law, this much is clear: plenty of what the search engines have amassed about us may be obtained without a wiretap or search warrant.
Dig last updated on Feb. 14, 2006Advertisement
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By Alex Tribble, May 11 at 10:12 pm # Windows is designed to nab your privacy as well. See the e-book at http://www.rexxinfo.org/How_to_Secure_Your_Windows_PC_ and_Your_Privacy.pdf My favorite part—where it tells about how printers write secret fingerprints on every document you print!
By Bert, January 1 at 11:52 pm # Privacy Act R.I.P.The digiworld is here to stay, now if only we could
By Skruff, March 19, 2007 at 2:38 pm # Comment #59370 by Noah on 3/19 at 10:11 am Dude, but google makes my life way easier You can have “easy” and not worry about ass biting too: They dump the history every 30 days! Google/Yahoo keep it forever!
By Noah, March 19, 2007 at 10:11 am # Dude, but google makes my life way easier. If it will come back to bite me in the ass then so be it.
By Skruff, December 19, 2006 at 6:20 am # Comment #13210 by Lin on 7/07 at 9:15 am says: There’s only so much data you can have before the enormity of it buries you in a sea of “it just doesn’t matter”. This is so true. I remember when my father worked for Mobil back before it merged with EXXON. The IRS wanted records concerning Mobil’s off shore business, and taxes paid on same for the previous five years. Mobil sent the records in three railroad boxcars, and never heard any complaints from the IRS again.
By j, October 24, 2006 at 12:53 pm # Put tin foil on your head and take all your fillings so they can’t read your mind.
By M Henri Day, July 24, 2006 at 12:28 pm # I can’t help but finding Mr Malseed just a wee tad tendentious when he writes that «Google doesn’t even link to its privacy policy from its lily-white home page. (Is that “evil”?)». He is quite correct in that no link to the privacy policy is provided from the Home Page, which is what I should call clean and uncluttered (presumably what Mr Malseed means by «lily-white»), but surely he didn’t fail to notice the About Google link directly below the search window ? At the bottom of that page, which the cautious Mr Malseed certainly must have investigated thoroughly, he should have found a link to Privacy Policy next to the Google copywrite and a link to Terms of Service. To imply, as I think Mr Malseed does, that Google attempts to make it difficult to ascertain what the company’s privacy policy is because no link is offered directly from the «lily-white» Home Page is misleading, not to say dishonest, at best.... A second, and to my mind far graver objection to Mr Malseed’s rather shallow dig is that in the course of writing five pages on privacy concerns, he nowhere mentions the word Echelon. Is Mr Malseed playing bait and switch with us, in an attempt to distract our attention from one of the greatest threats to our personal privacy and perhaps our liberty ? Given a choice between Google and the US government, I’ll take Google anytime....
By Lin, July 7, 2006 at 9:15 am # There’s only so much data you can have before the enormity of it buries you in a sea of “it just doesn’t matter”. Too much information is sometimes worth a lot less than not enough. If it really freaks you out - every opportunity you have to search out the unpalatable on machines that are not your own - do it.. on the off chance that it will eventually drive some poor haystack-living needle hunter mad.
By 911 Eyewitness, March 31, 2006 at 1:53 pm # Google went further than censoring when they actually blacked out a story in the cache that had this in it “The New York Times Tokyo Bureau Chief, Jim Brooks, said that he couldn’t attend an official press function about 9/11 or he would be fired.” Google II has all your searches stored so you can take advantage of them. Next you will only have to implant the chip in your hand and all will be taken care of.
By JP, March 23, 2006 at 8:22 am # I’d do the opposite. Do a bunch of meaningless searches for “terrori*m child-po*n xx* you*g pus** ira* al-***da ci* ns* bush-hate*s anti-a*erican co*munist so*ialist li*eral” just to give them a bunch of garbage in their data mining filters.
By Kevin Lim, March 2, 2006 at 12:18 pm # I have compiled a list of methods I think are useful in maintaining privacy, while using the great features that these smart engineers have built.
By Susan Estelle, February 27, 2006 at 12:10 pm # I feel like Bush has become this country’s dictator and every law ever written to protect our right to privacy has been effectively flushed down the toilet!
By Alma Kee, February 27, 2006 at 6:30 am # Another reason to use “dial up” and not cable or DSL. No fixed IP address to track you with.
By bumblebee, February 21, 2006 at 5:03 am # Google is indeed evil passing themselves off as “hip”. Various search engines keep IP logs for differing amounts of time. Alta-Vista deletes in a year. Clusty the same. Of course Google keeps your IP log forever. Mezzy doesn’t keep a log at all and of course you can use the scroogle scraper (scroogle.org)to stop Google from feeding on your data or anonimize your web surfing or any search engine with anonymouse.org.
By robert davies, February 17, 2006 at 8:49 pm # Very distressing, this and so many other ears listening in on our private lives (in the USA especially). As soon as Google surrenders to the feds, I look for another server. In our so-called free enterprise world, will there be a server who respects our privacy? Does Bush have dirt on the senators and representatives so that they don’t stop
By Sergio, February 17, 2006 at 2:24 pm # information is power the one who has it may change your world for good or bad. nothing is more dangerous than knowledge in the hands of faceless companies or governments. threats to freedom are not to be disrespected. is it the right time for panic? i don’t think so. here i have a few tips that may help you to rest your soul: 1. You should not make any personal or ashaming searchs in your house or office. personally i don’t believe in “shame”,
By christian ryan, February 17, 2006 at 12:49 pm # I have known a long time that companies such as Google ect were spying on citizens.I was in the computer whole sale business and had information this was going on and had been really never stopped except for a while after the Nixon watergate deal.I have been hesitenant to tell all but my trusted friends .I always tried to warn friends and friends of friends about this.They said you are nuts they cant do that.I said well be careful if you think I am crazy I could tell you more but if you dont respect me even this much forget it you a fool.Its worse than you think.Weather modification ,911 is a lie , Go to Alex Jones on search engine he has been fighting this stuff for years and is on the radio on Republic Broadcasting and Genisus Network out of Austin TX.Do a search or go to http://www.infowars.com or http://www.prisonplanet.com
By Red Mercury, February 17, 2006 at 6:46 am # Yup. Google is a privacy train smash waiting to happen. Google Desktop for God’s sake.
By Walter Reinig, February 16, 2006 at 8:18 am # All this ‘information’ that can be compiled in a dossier on people is already happening, dear reader...My wife went to one of those private eye websites, and pulled up a bunch of stuff on me that I’d never told her...like the aliases I never used, but put in with my info when I got my membership with BMI (songwriter’s royalty entity)...no details, sources mentioned..so, it made me look like a devious character....then the bombshell...My wife shared with me that in this dossier was a child molestation issue..no details other than a location from where it was reported to have occurred… My ex-wife was molested by her father...tried to kill herself after being reawakened to that part of her life one day....terrible day in my life..but, now I’m attached to this tag… child molester…
By Kristopher Rikken, February 16, 2006 at 2:43 am # It’s a scary thought, but I don’t think the worst case scenario in the lead of this piece is a real risk. The search engine records of any intelligent person interested in the world around them are going to be incredibly diverse. An “investigator” or “deep packet inspector” could arrive at a thousand shaggy dog stories connecting the “dots,” but anything substantial? The world is too hierarchically complex to be able to conclude anything for sure from the fact that a person has looked up certain things. To do a complete concordance for a person even if it were possible to cross-reference emails and personal data, would require so much manpower, so much sheer time, that it boggles the mind. Someone may be looking at “infidelity” example, because of a friend’s infidelity, because they are considering cheating and want advice on how to conceal it, or because they want to be sure of the word’s spelling. Now if a regime did come along that is so unhip to the nature of life in a free society that it starts prosecuting people on the basis of their Net searches, then they probably will not have anything against saving a lot of time and dispensing with due process completely, and simply lock up suspected intellectuals. Or worse, take away their Net.
By Sean, February 15, 2006 at 12:34 pm # Its interesting to compare this to the recent attempts by china and other countries to censor the net.
By rex, February 15, 2006 at 12:05 pm # Since the FISA law stringently restricts the retention of information obtained by monitoring communications of US citizens how do internet companies get around it and maintain files that would be illegal for the NSA to compile even with the current Bush spying program? Add Your Comment |
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