Discussion on:

Why Google Buzz confirmed our two worst fears about Google

Original post:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=3822

I have for years recommended that Google cookies not be kept, that Google browser helper objects not be installed, and Google gmail be used only as a decoy address for spam. No one, company or government can be trusted with God like knowledge of everyones business. Especially a company the likes of Google who have no loyalities except to their own bottom line.

Since its inception I have heard and forwarded warnings against their data mining practices. I.M.H.O. the entire social networking business is like black mold in the corner. You'd have to be crazy (or 13)not to see whats wrong with that picture....

Facebook, at first didn't seem like much, then I saw all of my friends just posting up all types of personal information on, information that can be used by the Census Bureau...Hey, i'm all for technology, but do you really want to put all of your stuff online, seriously, why not just give them your social security number(unless we've already done that, :D)

I have a Gmail account that I use infrequently. When I logged on a few days ago and was confronted with the Buzz screen and an invitation to join, my first reaction was "What's this?". There is no way I would join anything without knowing about it first so I clicked the "Nah" option and I'm very glad I did. I don't trust the Internet, let alone Google, so, for example, I don't do internet banking - the telephone is far simpler, it doesn't need to boot up or find the site required - and I still get 365/24/7 service which involves talking to a human being!

I wouldn't count on the fact that you clicked the "Nah" option to protect you. I did the exact same thing and I still was joined up. I've had a number of colleagues and friends experience the same issue. Apparently, that "Nah" option (at least for the first few days to a week) only indicated to Google that you weren't interested in looking at it right now - not that you didn't want to join at all.

IMHO Google has way too much info curently and if you read their privacy statement they really can do a whole lot while remaining true to it.

I still get 365/24/7 service which involves talking to a human being!

I get IVR at my bank.

because none of this bothers me one little bit. Now, if I had my entire company on Google it would be another matter, but I have only my personal dealings there. I am aware that there are many ways in which my privacy could be violated by many different entities, but short of stopping all interaction with the world I don't see how anyone can really avoid this. I'm a HUGE fan of Google and continue to be, BUZZ or no BUZZ.

I love Google Buzz. I love the future concept of Google as my single dashboard for my email, my calendar - and HOPE i can facebook and tweet WITHOUT LEAVING my dashboard.

Privacy ? We have not had that since the late 80s. Sheesh. Who cares what I read - you are all welcome to come and see that.

..what are you thinking..

It's what you search for, what you buy, what you think, and what you say in jest or by accident. I don't think I'd want to have homeland security paying me a visit because I looked up how to make a nuclear b*mb or wanted to find out more about @nthrax. And, apparrently, all you friends and colleagues would have been exposed too.

First of all.. If you're looking up how to make a nuclear bomb, or information about anthrax besides seeing a doctor about it because you think you got exposed to it somehow, there's something wrong in the first place.

People don't generally look this up just because. Heck, if you were part of the U.S. Military within the past.... 15-20 years, you'd know enough about at least anthrax anyway.

Not to mention. Looking up how to make anthrax is MUCH different than how to make, distribute, or otherwise make use of it.

A wonderful example of ascribing motive based soley on your personal discomfort with the material and human nature in general.

Curiosity is one of many perfectly normal, legitimate and healthy reasons for a perfectly benign interest in the subjects you mention.
I might very well be curious as to how a nuclear bomb is built without having any intent of building one. For no other reason than I wonder how it's done.

The simple fact is that people *DO* "look this suff up just because" for perfectly normal and inoffensive reasons. You can also include content that is normally considered macabre, perverse or disgusting too.

Quit trying to police what people think and do in private or with consenting others, and focus more on what they actually do to random strangers or acquantances. Far fewer false positives that way, if nothing else.

I've made more than 5000 gal of biochemical agents in the last 15 years.
Well, as a homebrewer, i also call it beer.
I also make sauerkraut and bread. So i have to be interested in the workings of bacteria, yeast and enzymatic processes. After all the hysteria about anthr0x, my interest was awakened. I certainly googled it up. I never had the intention to make it, because a pretzel goes much better with beer.
I didn't have to look up the workings of nukes, since i read about them in books, quite some time before the http.
I have a natural curiosity in how stuff works and how it can be done the McGiver way. Almost all of it is very peaceful and life-sustaining(maybe not for the animals stuffed into the sausages). But since there is a dark side, i can't shut my eyes.

With all the official paranoia going on, i don't want to be singled out at a airport. Just because giigle leaked data about me or my contacts, knowingly or just because they don't care about privacy.

Cheers Thomas

People don't generally look this up just because.

I look up all kinds of weird stuff just because. I'm not the only one I know who looks up all kinds of weird stuff just because.
We're people.

Exceeds me.

it's natural to be curious about stuff. It doesn't make you a criminal to want to know things.

The total loss of privacy, likely since the 1980s, seems to impart the feeling on more and more people that curiosity is in itself a crime.

I had a Ukrainian "ex-Soviet" friend of my baby-boom generation who spoke of her youth and said: "Yes, we knew the KGB listened to our phone calls, but we tired of it and thought: 'well let them know exactly how popular they are'" -- so they spoke as freely as their hearts and blood alcohol levels allowed.

The total loss of privacy, likely since the 1980s, seems to impart the feeling on more and more people that curiosity is in itself a crime.

I had a Ukrainian "ex-Soviet" friend of my baby-boom generation who spoke of her youth and said: "Yes, we knew the KGB listened to our phone calls, but we tired of it and thought: 'well let them know exactly how unpopular they are'" -- so they spoke as freely as their hearts and blood alcohol levels allowed.

Besides; if you just trust the media, Rupert Murdoch pwns your brain.
You have to check out the facts for yourself if you're going to follow the media's wild goose chase for the next big scoop.
Or better, do as I do, just follow the funny pages. And childrens TV... Lunar Jim for example is good, and Poko.

If you're looking up how to make a nuclear bomb, or information about anthrax...there's something wrong in the first place.

I'm a translator, so I might very well find myself saddled with a translation about some cousin microbe to it, do a google search to find relevant techie terms and go through the anthrax article because the lab terminology overlaps.

I may well just react to panic-mongering in the media and want to find out how to react if some silly terrorist mails me some.

I might be a jealous boyfriend in a mood of wanton revenge wondering if anthrax isn't some OTC drug I can add to cornflour to mail to my ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend.

At least part of the real risk to the idiotically and intelligently innocent is how the information gets entered into the system.

Decades ago, A Frenchman got pulled over for a perfectly routine highway safety check. And the officer mentions a complaint against him for breaking and entering. The guy scratches his head and realizes that, yes, he had filed such a complaint several years earlier.

But the entry on the French police database just said: "Complaint for breaking and entering."

Just because I'm paranoid. doesn't mean they're not out to get me...especially if there's huge profits in collecting things "for nothing" then
misusing them.

As usual the fans will always be let down by their stupid heroes as Tiger woods has done.To be a fan is not a bad thing but to shut ur eyes and close ur ears will going to harm u..its people like u who makes such companies thrive and misuse the privacy and information for their lust for money..see the reality b4 it bites u

Say you are involved in some kind of legal struggle, harassment or whatnot. Any situation in which you are frequently emailing someone via gmail, and you have to be very careful about what you say and how you say it because the person you're communicating with is not your friend.

Google Buzz happens. You and this person are now on each others' friends lists. You're unaware of this. Several bad things can happen:

You could complain about the struggle on Google Buzz while, unbeknownst to you, the other person is taking screenshots of what you say.

You could be reading things on Google Reader that reveal things that will hurt you, while the other person silently takes notes.

Your friends list could contain a third party to the struggle whose presence on your list hurts your case. (Say it's a divorce issue, and someone you're accused of being infidelous with appears on your list.)

The Google Reader thing is quite disturbing to me. I could be reading a book about hacking out of curiosity, and have that fact appear on my boss's screen at work.

I could be in the interview process for a job and because we both use gmail, have the kinds of things I might say to friends on social media appearing on the screen of the person I'm interviewing with.

There are LOTS of reasons to dislike the idea of your computer automatically connecting you to bunches of people without a one-by-one manual linking process like is done on Facebook, Linked-In etc.

@Brian, and thank you. As a longtime trial lawyer, I was saved from a long post. This is terribly serious, people; everything in email, buzz, profiles are discoverable. You may be able to fight it, but it's not an automatic exclusion. Your lawyers are mostly e-illiterate, and won't proffer this insight, and it won't be their problem if it bites the client in the butt. DON'T EMAIL, POST, BLOG, OR FACEBOOK ANYTHING REGARDING ANY ASPECT OF POTENTIAL LITIGATION. Thank you. (BTW, I'm not a youngster and didn't grow up on computers. I just hate to lose, expecially for stupid errors.)

Yes, I read something the other day about some kid who burgled a shop in his late-night way, stuffed his pockets to the brim and then realized how much free time he had on his hands just as he noticed that the shop's PC was turned on, so he started by checking his MySpace account...

Your advice is awfully sound, but few of us share your training and have an impossible time deciding which words put our foot in our legal mouth and which don't.

So shall we err on the side of fear?

Is that democracy?

....the same type of thing with Google Desktop? (indexing all files on your local computer on their servers). Google web search good....Google anything else bad.

As a recall google desktop never index anything to their servers. It did and does put everything into an unencrypted texted based index. This makes it very easy for a thief to find the personal identity information if your computer is ever breached.
The sad thing is that windows desktop search or indexer does the same thing. Goes what if you are running Vista or Windows 7 your files and email are all indexed.

On to a different subject on this matter; Why is it the every time this subject comes up there are two distinct arguments that are stated. One being, the potential for governmental abuse Homeland security and what not. The second one being, the I am not doing anything illegal and have nothing to hide.

To me these agreement are a little paranoid, one, and a little naive, two. Neither capture what is think is the bigger concern. Identity theft continues to be a pandemic and law enforcement can and has done little to stop it. The fact is that when identity theft occurs because of information stored on computer systems it is very rarely from an individual?s computers system (I am excluding phishing scams). It is usually because the information is breached at ?processing center? or clearing house. A rouge employee steals a hard drive or simply copied the information down. This happens at place in which we believe to have very tight security standards and yet it still happens.
With that said how many times have you sent an email containing something that could be used to reconstruct you identity? Did a friend ever send you ecard for your birthday? That is piece one. Mothers maiden name? Has that ever been sent in an email ? no? Hi uncle jerry sent to email jerrysmith@somewhere.com - piece two. Now I got your mothers maiden name. What about your current or a past address? There?s piece three. If you are using Gmail guess what, it is all indexed so that they can ?deliver relevant ad content?. It is index for an undisclosed time. One breach at google and your identity is gone.
It?s not about your IP address. Atomizing that address does nothing to protect you and your identity. Those who don?t bank online or shop on-line guess what your information is no more protected than those that do ? your information is still on a computer somewhere. Lets quit being paranoid about the government and realize that we all have something to hide from the crooks and thieves.

I'm going through id theft now; probably through aol acct four years ago, is just now showing up (multiple cards, loans, etc), and it's the worst I've been through. My friends (attys) thought I was crazy about security then. I now select cookies, delete after session, send no usable personal info through email, have multiple spyware/malware/antivirus programs running. Will never have facebook or any other public profile.

most locked down PCs you could imagine, and I got cracked for my debit card. It had to happen within the last year to a vendor of mine.

But I haven't contacted them all, one of them, I can't contact directly, because their email won't work, their phone sales service company is innocent as far as I'm concerned, I just think a Doctor doesn't know squat about setting up secure data handling. There is nothing wrong with their SSL; I think it happened AFTER the sale information came in on SSL. The site manager is more likely the ignorant one.

Any merchant, online, brick and mortar, even your local bank can get cracked. It isn't always your PC security that is at fault.

The smart money is to switch to a card that tenders a different card number every time you use it, like Discover. I've been looking for something like this for three years and couldn't find one.

I realize credit cards already have protection for theft, I just refuse to let the crook have ANY money!!! Card company losses must be stopped too.

I do not work for any person or company, I just hate malware,and the web-criminal crackers who write it, and internet thieves to pieces!!

Decades ago, someone got my insurance information and promptly racked up over $100k in medical bills; the insurance company confirmed this, but did not prosecute (I proved the guilty party (a licensed attorney); gave all parties that information; no prosecution.) I represented hospitals and insurers at the time. The odds are very high that your computerized health information database indicates this; the odds are enormous if you have children. Please have a doctor access your full file, and look over it carefully.

I'm still trying to stop the ID theft, which apparently occurred about 4-5 years ago but did not 'pop' as a problem until now. Reporting it to banks and companies is worthless. You have to report it to your state agencies. However, those agencies won't research and consequently can't prosecute. If you want your life history repaired you have to do the work yourself, and give the results to the agency, and hope for the best.

Thanks to help from friendly computergeeks, and having actually gone to 'hacking sites' to learn how good hacking is done, my system is about as protected as it can be; even down to encryption and 'decoy' files. Thanks, guys!!! (You have to know how and why hackers operate, not just what they do, in order to create an effective defense.)

My credit hasn't been touched, and they only got 19 bucks, I didn't loose anything so far. However, you medical record suggestion is a good one. But they got to have your SSN for that. I'm not convinced they have that or they would have cleaned out my account.

I'm sure they would have got into by credit base also, but no evidence exists of that.

As I stated before, I think they got just enough credit card details to make a small purchase and avoid a VISA authorization flag. This way they can circumvent this check.

It is similar to small gas and food purchases that are not checked.

If they really had enough information, they would be destroying me already. They can't get at me with that card information anymore, as it is blocked, anyone trying to use it again will find themselves handcuffed in the back of a squad car.

I will find the vendor who leaked my information. My new card guarantees it. I will see who gets the transaction blocked this time. And that number will give away the vendor who lost it!!

You write: "Why is it the every time this subject comes up there are two distinct arguments(:)...the potential for governmental abuse...and (")the I am not doing anything illegal and have nothing to hide.(")

The third issue is that data is misinterpreted in all good faith by LEA officers with disastrous consequences for all concerned.

As I mentioned here already, Google can't track you unless you let them. Not only do they not know who you are, but they can't even be sure that a search even came from the same computer 2 sessions in a row.

You ISP, on the other hand, knows exactly who you are, where you live, and if you have automatic monthly payments, they have your credit-card or ABA routing information. AND they can monitor every packet of data that goes to and from you. Furthermore, in the US, under the Patriot Act, they have to give this information to Homeland Security if requested.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10448060-38.html

does know just about everything about you, if you block it, that can reduce your exposure, but like you say, the ISP networks servers already keep a record on traffic.

I've read many articles here and on ZDNet that even without Google Analytics, Google could reconstruct just who you are without much trouble. This is why they, and every other browser company, are beholding to Homeland Security.

Looking at your signature and location, you likely have chosen to try and hide on the www. No problem with that, as I did the same most of the 90's. But then my real name shows up at yahoo, making reference to a MSN Qwest email address, I did not use. Then it got filtered into Google. The point is from XP being the first non-share/controled OS install, M$ unlocked our aliasing of who we are. It doesn't bother me as I'm honest and not trying to spam a $30 bill, but you can refuse Buz or not, as they simply bypassed our filters of blocked email from whom we set for one reason or another. You can still Opt out, but imho, should sign in to check whom is checked to allow social networking, and uncheck the box's to filter again. Looking at the first page of a search on any search engine, you will find 90% of what you get in a Google search. IOW, any search engine is still going to Google to post results.

POV

that could save my life someday.

I like your moniker! Cool! Have a good day!

"I've read many articles here and on ZDNet that even without Google Analytics, Google could reconstruct just who you are without much trouble"

I assume we are both computer professionals because we are discussing this on Tech Republic, so in technical terms how can they "reconstruct" who I am, or even tie a half-dozen or so different searches to the same user (me) without cookies or being able to distinguish my PC from all the other ones on this side of the firewall (i.e., all sharing the same EXternal IP address)?

Even if they key on some quirky interest of mine (say, searching diaries of men who served on WWII DE's), how could they tell that I'm the _same_ person who's searching on XML Schema editors or trying to hire a figure model with dance experience or looking up the lyrics of a Lady Gaga song?

and you shall receive! Some of it has to do with entropy and other mathematical models.

However, my beef isn't so much with Google as what can happen if they are cracked by the Chinese or other crooks. This can do great damage to many people for many reasons, too numerous to list here.

There is really no reason to trust our government either; I mean - that is just the American way - and righteous too, in my not so humble opinion.

So by default, Google has become a government stooge, for both the PRC and homeland security.

You write: "However, my beef (is)...what can happen if they are cracked by the Chinese or other crooks. This can do great damage... There is really no reason to trust our government either; I mean - that is just the American way - and righteous too... So by default, Google has become a government stooge, for both the PRC and homeland security."

We agree at heart!

Maybe turn around is fair play, perhaps this will teach them a lesson?

Shall we therefore allow that everything has lessons for everyone?

truth?

you are quite right. The Google search engine itself does not obtain any Personally Identifying Information (PII) about anyone who uses it.

You can use Scroogle (http://www.scroogle.org) instead if you don't want Google to collect and retain the data that they do obtain from HTTP packet headers, such as the IP address that you are (currently) using. "Dynamic" IP addresses often remain quite static for long periods of time, but you can usually force the ISP to change the one that you are using by simply powering off/on the interface device (e.g., a "DSL modem", which is actually a router with a DHCP server).

However, Google might obtain some PII when someone uses some of its other services, and they can learn a lot about a GMail user even if they don't obtain much PII about them.

The Google Privacy Policy is a bit long, detailed and differs somewhat among its various products and services. However, on the whole, it doesn't require a law-school degree to read and understand:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html

especially:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html

However, the Opt-Out:

http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

button and "manage your ad preferences" hyperlink fetch only empty pages for the corresponding URL. Also, the textual content of that page has changed quite remarkably since I previously read it, and not for the better!

That said, it is Doubleclick that you really must dodge!

The trouble with shifting to any alternate "enhanced privacy" engine is that you are simply flagging yourself as a subject of especial interest.

Like, any intel officer is legitimately entitled to ask her/himself: If you wanna hide something, why would you ever need to do that?

And move with the speed of intuitive insight to: "So let's find out."

there is not one political group that likes the new homeland security scene. We all can't wait for the Supreme Court to tear it to pieces, and it will. If not, they will see protest like none since the Vietnam War, and they will never get away with it!

I am speaking particularly toward inter state communication; on outbound commo the government may have slightly better leeway.

Inbound is already outside the boundaries of Constitutional protection. Anything foreigh is under the perview of the President and congressional oversight. They pretty much can control anything comming in, but if it interferes with commerce, it can run into the commerce clause.

This is one of the most powerful statements in the Constitution! It is the primary reason drugs and machine guns cannot be fully outlawed in our country; only taxed!

The search engine ixquick.com is an excellent meta-search engine. And they DO NOT record your IP address and information.

http://www.ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html