Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Google redefines “privacy policy” as “guess what, you have no privacy” policy
by Larry Geller
Google has redefined “privacy” as used in “privacy policy.” Basically, you hardly have any left.
Perhaps they should have published a “surveillance policy” today instead.
Google announced Tuesday its plans to integrate data from all its services with your profile for logged-in Google+ users. As usual, they sounded chipper about it: “We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day.”
A bigger problem, as The Post’s Hayley Tsukayama pointed out, is that, for Android users, there’s never really an option to be logged out, so everything you do, Google can now track, from searches to direction requests to videos watched.
…
Google, what happened? You’re going from efficient to officious, from intuitive to invasive. You’re becoming an inept repeat of everything that bothers us enough when Facebook does it.[Washington Post, Google’s no-opt-out privacy changes and the end of the anonymous Internet, 1/25/2012]
Opt out? I couldn’t find an opt-out. It says that if you use any Google service, you’re bound by the policy starting March 1.
Get used to it.
So now that Google has entangled all UH affairs into their nest, what implications does that have on studentsʻ records and such? I wonder.
What it boils down to is: we really have no freedom of choice. Only the ʻappearanceʻ of choice.
: January 26, 2012 at 10:50:00 AM HST << Home
Post a Comment
Requiring those Captcha codes at least temporarily, in the hopes that it quells the flood of comment spam I've been receiving.