Google and privacy

rockhillmanor wrote:

Google and privacy

2 words that don't go together.
IMHO Google is "THE" worst.

google, yahoo, twitter, facebook, apple....they are all intertwined to gather as much info on a person they can to sell and report to gov agencies.:W

Very well said and a true story, they all work hand and glove with all the alphabet soup agencies.

Very uncool in my eyes :M

USARMYCW wrote:
If you have your computer repaired and the repairman finds bad stuff he notifies the police.

Key word being "finds". Google routinely "scans".

Like I said that particular crime was a bad one but I have a problem with them admitting they 'routinely scan' and report to the /policegov. Issue was with what else do they scan for?

If you have your computer repaired and the repairman finds bad stuff he notifies the police.

rockhillmanor wrote:

I watched it on the news here down in Florida. To say I was shocked was an understatement. Sure didn't know google does that. I'll try and do search on the local tv stations and see if they listed it. News like that is so small they sometimes don't even put it on their website. Florida is more into daily bank robbers daily hit and runs and bodies in the woods.. :(

Google has had a long-standing public policy that they will report you to the authorities if you are involved in child porn. I imagine that any photo-processing business would have similar policies/requirements.

I don't know if the case you're referring to involves this.

Found this. I guess it wasn't 'in' Florida news.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2013/11/21/googles-role-in-woodland-child-pornography-arrest-raises-privacy-concerns/

Yes the guy allegedly committed a crime we all do not like BUT read the article how they work with the police. After an account is targeted, a google 'employee' decides if your picture on your Picaso site COULD be criminal and reported to police. Data base sharing with the police is NOT limited to this particular type of crime.:R

....The FBI says the investigation began in March when Google’s hashing technology found two ... pictures in his Picasa library. Picasa is a cloud-sharing platform for images owned by Google.

....Google says if you have an account with them, it’s not just indiscriminately searching through your pictures, but their servers are looking for possible digital fingerprints the FBI may be interested in.

....The company says its database is share with law enforcement and watchdog groups such as the Internet Watch Foundation .......

....When an image is found, an employee will inspect it to make sure ......and not just a picture of a child at bath time.

Soooo, you probably shouldn't be taking any more pictures of your children taking a bubble bath and sending them to granny anytime soon.
Or IMHO uploading ANY of your pictures on cloud or whatever! :B

downtheroad wrote:

rockhillmanor wrote:

snip
Just last week google called the police on an account member because they thought he was surfing inappropriate material. Police arrested the guy.

Do you have a link to this? (not saying it's false, just interested)

I watched it on the news here down in Florida. To say I was shocked was an understatement. Sure didn't know google does that. I'll try and do search on the local tv stations and see if they listed it. News like that is so small they sometimes don't even put it on their website. Florida is more into daily bank robbers daily hit and runs and bodies in the woods.. :(

rockhillmanor wrote:

snip
Just last week google called the police on an account member because they thought he was surfing inappropriate material. Police arrested the guy.

Do you have a link to this? (not saying it's false, just interested)

Google and privacy

2 words that don't go together.
IMHO Google is "THE" worst.

I stay away from anything Google which is almost near impossible. I dropped my blog of 10 years the day I was required to log in with a google account to access my blog. Bought a new iPhone and the permanent gaming control app that comes with it? Opened it up and it had my ID already on it 'from a closed google account I had 11 years ago'. Just how does that happen?

google, yahoo, twitter, facebook, apple....they are all intertwined to gather as much info on a person they can to sell and report to gov agencies.

Just last week google called the police on an account member because they thought he was surfing inappropriate material. Police arrested the guy.

IMHO google is not a legal police force and has no business doing so. But I do believe they are in bed with them which is becoming more apparent every day. So beware what you joke about to friends on the internet.:W

I know what you did last summer.

Shared cookies or objects can track your activities from multiple websites, and can also be used to identify specific computers. Google and Yahoo explicitly claim to also scan all emails for marketing purposes. But so do virtually all other free email providers. Necessary for auto spam/malware detection purposes. You just have to take their word that they are not collecting the data for marketing?

Among popular extensions for privacy or tracking for Firefox, I use Self-Destructing Cookies, which limits cookies to a particular website. Then destroys them when you leave the site by closing the tab so cannot be used for cross site tracking.

However, you may want to green light some websites to save cookies such as RV.NET, to avoid having to re-log in to your account to post each time you return.

Besides privacy concerns, you can potentially improve security by looking at the free HTTPS Everywhere.