Google is more dangerous than Facebook. In the later you usually have a persona you pretend to be. But Google knows you better than yourself. You can’t lie to Google. Is your teenage daughter pregnant? Do you have a disease that is socially rejected? Do you want to have an abortion? Are those pimples in your groin an STD? Are you secretly looking for another job? Google probably knows that before you do. And their business plan is making money out of that information.
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place;"
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo 12-7-09.
The "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it;"
Said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.
"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are;"
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the 2010 Techonomy conference.
"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about;"
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.
"It's a future where you don't forget anything…"In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time;"
Explained Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at TechCrunch, 9-28-10.
"No harm, no foul;"
Concerning Google's unauthorized collection of WiFi signals from tens of millions of homes in 33 countries over three years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the Times of London in May 2010.
If we really want to deal with Google's enormous power, we'll need to tackle the issue at both ends: political and technical. As for politics, it doesn't look like Google is going to be attacked the way it happened to FB - the CA affair was almost an accident. And Google knows better and will do everything to avoid accidents.
The second issue is technological. The competing search engines are not there yet, although they're continuously improving. Google got where they are not only by text search, but also extending the search categories horizontally. The competing search engine would need some smart minds to come up with something extra, something genuinely useful that would make people flock there.
Then there are all other parts of Google ecosystem that people depend on: Gmail, Adwords, Adsense, GA. And millions of Android devices. How to eradicate all that from our lives? It will take decades to complete - if we started now, that is.
Using other search engines goes a long way to get them there - the more they are used the more advertising dollars they get (and the less google gets), which leads to dollars to invest.
I find that duckduckgo is good enough for everything these days.
"I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." from 8/10/10 WSJ interview.
Google tracks online behaviour on an industrial scale. It's baffling how little scrutiny the company faces, least of all from the tech community who often rush to it's defence. (Does a multi-billion dollar company need your defence?)
When you create a Google account, you're asked to provide your name, your gender, your date of birth, your location and your mobile phone number. Some of your most personal and private details, all of which will now be tied to your online behaviour.
That ceaseless data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do. It's quite horrible that this is happening - the kids don't even get a say, it's the adults who've decided this.
It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form and detached from user accounts, we don't know how that information could be mined or analysed either now or in the future. (In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the ginormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture).
And we've seen from Spotify and Netflix how even aggregated data can reveal very private and personal user behaviour.
Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy. Just because Google hasn't ever suffered a breach of user data, people say that Google can be trusted. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.
Where does it say that it doesn't track students on that page?
The G Suite for Education Privacy Notice [1] clearly states that Google collects device information, unique device identifiers, mobile network information (including phone number of the user). Also logged are IP addresses, location information, and app usage using unique application numbers.
Even if this information is detached from individual accounts and aggregated, it equals a phenomenal amount of data captured by Google on millions of students in the US.
>Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy.
>You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.
Non sequitur conclusion from a faulty premise. If you're a Google user, then it's in your best interest that their security is up to par and they don't disappoint. I get enterprise class 2FA security to protect my data on my end and clear controls, opt-outs and buttons everywhere to delete all of my data from any particular service, plus I get to download such data in a useful, documented format for my own consumption, not some crippled html report I need to mine after the fact.
If you are NOT a Google user, though, not tracking you is not their duty, but a security breach on YOUR part, especially on the part of those who kbow better.
Its like a person walking naked in a public square, expecting that it was the city's duty to protect their privacy.
If you are Not a Google user and do not wish to be tracked by Google or Facebook or anyone for that matter, you need to assume responsibility for the security of your data and metadata by becoming as inconspicuous on the network as you can.
Again, it's nobody's duty but yours and failure to do so is a breach of your own security leading to leakage of your privacy.
The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms. Having centralized information for a user is important to many (you can always spread it across multiple emails and accounts) but I think violation of privacy is the main reason Facebook is under investigation not centralization of data.
Google is its own third party: There is no appreciable difference between Facebook sharing your data with an ad company and Google sharing your data with their own built-in ad company.
There definitely is... That's the whole point of Facebook's Senate hearing. If it stays within company and can't be used by directly by third parties for their own agendas like influencing elections. I 100% think that we should be weary of over centralized information but we are talking about two very different scenarios: even a small social network with relatively little information can be very dangerous if it leaks personal data.
Please stop spreading factually wrong information, especially on a subject as important as this one. Maybe research the material for a bit? The best place to start is doubleclick and their profiling options as well as the RTB spec. That will give you a pretty shocking (if I understand the level to which you are still in the dark correctly) insight into what kind of data is freely shared between ad tech companies amongst each other and their customers (agencies, advertisers).
I understand that you are angry about the Cambridge Analytica revelations, I am too. But I am not spreading misinformation, I am participating in a discussion. I have repeatedly try to communicate that I am not talking about targeted advertising. In the senate hearing, the counsel is honing on some important points. What is the alternative to Facebook (i.e. a real competitor)? What information is Facebook gathering on non-users? What is Facebook doing to shield users' from the outside world? How much metadata is Facebook gathering/surmising outside of a user's direct input? These are way bigger questions than does Facebook allow Advertisers to target you based on certain demographics (a similar but different debate). Google is poised to abuse / misuse personal data in the same way but regulating and persecuting are very different processes and should not be conflated in these discussions. I simply want to draw those distinctions between Google and Facebook.
It's all targeted advertising so if you want to make the case that outside of targeted advertising Google is squeaky clean then you're welcome to that but it's a rather narrow definition for what arguably is the largest advertising company in the world.
They exist because of and for targeted advertising, everything else is just a means of getting there.
You do realize that Google has it's own reasons for wanting to influence elections, right? They operate their own PAC and spend millions of dollars donating to political candidates and lobbyist groups.
"Within company" is a meaningless distinction. It requires the assumption that Facebook or Google themselves are trustworthy, and smaller companies are not. But the big players themselves, are in fact, not trustworthy. So whether or not they sell the data or abuse it in-house is pretty much irrelevant.
Obviously but you're missing the main focus which is privacy and responsibility of holding personal data. It's not about whether Facebook is more or less trustworthy than Google--I think we should be very wary of both. All I'm saying is when you give your data to a company it should stay within those walls and be clear how is used. It's one thing if Facebook or Google is influencing elections (which every major corporation tries to do with money, power, and/or information) it's about allowing third parties to abuse that power indiscriminately which Facebook did and Google did not.
> The Google real-time bidding spec outlines pretty clearly what data Google will share with third parties
This is exactly my point is it is clear you are consenting and have control and can opt out here: https://adssettings.google.com/. I am very aware of real-time bidding for ads works.
Anonymous profiles can be addressed using either gender until otherwise specified, besides that HN is so skewed towards males that it is a safe assumption.
If you want to distract from the discussion at hand by making it about gender then that's on you.
As for 'consenting' and 'opting out' that's not how it should work, you don't 'consent' to being tracked by Google because you didn't opt out, that's Google assuming your consent (which, to tie it in with the previous bit is a lot more serious than assuming someone's gender).
Fun fact: Google collects much more data from Android devices than from iOS devices. This might be unsurprising, and even obvious, but I was surprised how precise and intrusive that data is.
The whole time I was using an Android phone with my google account logged in on the device, google recorded and retained basically everything. My location, without even me using the maps app. My old contacts which I deleted from my contacts lists were still in the records. Any IPv4 or IPv6 address my phone was assigned to. This was even more creepy than facebook's data trove. I deleted my data on facebook as far as I could and also the account (not just deactivated) and I deleted most of the data google had on me. The problem is that I only can assume that all the data is now gone, but how can I be sure?
Google might constantly assure that they handle everything with care, but the extent of their intrusion into my private life is really scary.
It also annoys the hell out of me how often companies get away with something if they just say "Whoops, it was a mistake/bug."
Google was recently found to track Android users' location even when they didn't have their GPS on. And they said it was a "bug". Like I'm just going to believe that from a company whose main objective is to track as much about us as possible.
But my point is the FTC should have slapped them with a major (at least tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending how long they've been doing it and to how many people) even if this was a bug.
If you tracked or collected data without users' consent, you get fined - bigly. No ifs or buts about it. Enough with the BS excuses and apology tours while they pocket billions from the "error" or "mistake."
As long as money and politics are strongly intertwined it is unlikely this will happen within the country of origin of the company. Lobbyists are just too powerful.
And that's before we get into the kind of tricks and entity like Google or Facebook could pull if they decided to become an active participant rather than just a channel for advertising. If that hasn't already happened.
Money and politics is basically the way people run things, as sad as it sounds. You can substitute money with something different, it doesn't matter as people need some system of exchange. Money seems effective and easy enough.
So, it's not the money that is the problem. It might have something to do with people, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Unfortunately politicians can be lobbied/bribed in many subtler ways. A corporation can invest in city infrastructure, donate medical equipment, libraries, etc. then invite their friendly politician for a public speech to the inauguration so that the public associates something good (that didn't cost taxpayers a single dime) to his face. That politician gets a lot more votes and the corporation gets a foot in the government door: a win-win scenario for both and completely legal.
"It might have something to do with people, but I haven't figured it out yet."
Wanting more (which can be positive) paired with lack of empathy (which is not). People having both those traits should never ever put in a powerful position because they will eventually abuse their power for personal gain harming others in the process.
Can you link the article about Google tracking you even when location wasn't on?
I am curious because I more or less came to that same hypothesis, but had no hard evidence. I noted before that when I turned on and off location services, the GPS lock was near instantaneous (i.e. when I turned on location, Google Maps located me with GPS precision immediately. There could be other ways of how this happens, it was noted in another post of mine, but that had still had me a bit suspicious. I replaced Google Play Services with microG recently (https://lineage.microg.org/). I then saw that it was MicroG, NOT the OS, that had control over my location, and MicroG still tracks my location when Location is off(https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...).
While none of this conclusively points to Google Play Services tracking me when it is off, the way that Android is set up makes me very strongly suspect that's what they did.
I’m all-in with google services and acknowledge they have an insane amount of data on me, but very happy to be an iPhone user.
At least it gives some basic form of separation between my phone and the services I use - under the assumption that google services will have to request access to things.
Under google+android, I have no confidence that there won’t be accidental or intentional data harvesting. My wife’s Pixel 2 came with everything enabled by default and that data it Hoover’s up automatically is crazy.
Because some people, like myself, are perfectly happy to just not use them. There are alternatives to authoritarianism, and America was supposed to be one of them.
Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers, who facilitate the worst kinds of third-party privacy violation and about whom most people know very little, should go next. Then the government itself. Then Google, and then Amazon.
BTW, if you want to have some fun, just try to imagine that the the government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it - either for the government itself or for election campaigns. IMO that makes a lot of their otherwise nonsensical or inconsistent behavior much more understandable. Creepy. They totally want to know more about us than Facebook and Google put together; they just don't know how.
"...Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers ... should go next...
Resources, including most relevantly attention, are finite. That's why the attention is only on Facebook now, when it should already be on these others as well. Much as I'd love for people to see all of the picture at once when they're trying to make policy, I don't think that's what really happens.
Because a "loss" can disrupt the momentum and public support that is snowballing with these Facebook headlines. Think about the failed attempt to break up Microsoft in the 90s. Regardless of how you felt about the breakup idea, Congress was spurned at that decision and avoided taking action on other emerging monopolies.
No need to imagine it - the closing statement given by Grassley during the hearing was basically asking Zuckerberg for help with propaganda.
"So they get a distorted view of it, and — and really we — congressmen get along more than the public thinks. But these attitudes of the public, we've got to change and people of your position and your influence, you can do a lot to change this.
Whether I know you got plenty time around your corporation, through your corporation or privately, anything you can do to reduce this cynicism because we have a — a perfect constitution, maybe it's not perfect, but we got a very good constitution — the longest one written constitution in the history of man — mankind.
And — but if people don't have faith in the institutions of government, and then it's — it's our responsibility to enhance that faith so they have less cynicism in us, you know, we don't have a very strong democracy just because we've got a good constitution.
So I hope that everybody will do whatever they can to help enhance respect for government, including speaking to myself. I got to bend over backwards to do what I can so they don't — so I don't add to that cynicism."
Facebook is in a completely different privacy universe from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter and Snap.
Facebook actively employs dark patterns to get people to over-share. Google does not.
Facebook has a social graph of 2.2 billion people. Google does not.
Facebook has been caught repeatedly, systematically and recklessly leaking personal information to third parties over the last decade and a half. Google has not.
The 84 million profiles Facebook leaked to Cambridge Analytica is the headline, but it's far, far worse than this. Facebook quietly acknowledged that they've also leaked profiles of "most people on Facebook" to "malicious actors" [0]. There's nothing even close to this in the Google universe.
Facebook is the primary vector for subversion of democratic elections around the world (not only in the US, see for example the Philippines [1]). Google is not.
There are many alternatives to Google services that are a click away. There is no real alternative to Facebook.
So yes, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Snap, etc. have a lot of data, so they're on the list. But they're not in the same league as Facebook.
Totally off topic. The question is whether Google should be next after Facebook, not whether it's worse than Facebook. Reminds me of presidential "debates" where every question is just an excuse to trot out the candidate's favorite message whether it has anything to do with the question or not.
What about Google's sharing of data with data brokers? Example: the wifi at Starbucks (run by Google) now appears to use Experian's API to verify that your email address exists in Experian's database. I would be surprised if it isn't linking your real identity to your browser fingerprint and/or MAC address. Consumers need the right to use the Internet anonymously.
Once those (often unknown) companies have your MAC address, you can't turn your wifi on within range of a Starbucks without them having the capability to identify you and your location.
The biggest reason Google's name hasnt come up yet is probably because most of these senators are on Google's payrolls. That Google pays for favourable research is already well established.
The fact that no one has even raised a finger at Google, which by all accounts does a more pervasive job at monitoring people, speaks volumes on how well entrenched it is in media circles. The fact that Google can more or less kill any media outlet literally at a flick of a button is reason enough that it should be shut down hook, line and sinker.
My personal gut feel is that in the fairly long history (for a tech co), we’ve seen surprisingly little malicious use of data come from google. In a company of their size I’d expect a lot more screw ups and scandles, so perhaps they deserve a little more trust?
At the same time, they’re at the size and momentum that they should always be under scrutiny even if the answer keeps coming back “yeah they seem to be acting responsibly”. We don’t want to have an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
The problem I have is the lack of transparency. Google lets you download "all of your data". But it's nothing near the entirety of what they collect about you. It's insulting.
It's time we learn what they know about us. I want to know.
I absolutely agree Google has a much wider ecosystem they cover: social media with google plus or whatever is left of it, video via YouTube, Images via google Photos, cloud infrastructure via Compute Engine, google work via G Suit, ISP via Google Fiber etc... All these have Term of Services with very broad language they can dragnet collect whatever they want. I don't mind sharing the information and I don't want the government involve and regulate how private entities work. But I also wouldn't mind having this companies put on the spot and have to explain how they handle the data they gather. How they handle ToS and/or Data breach. Facebook is a speck of dust compare to google.
Yes that is the VERY reason why I said wouldn't mind having them put on the spot that way we can ask. Provided the right people are asking the questions. If it comes up through the questioning that they are grabbing information I chose not to share with them. I'll stop using the services and go somewhere else no one has a gun to my head.
Not saying Google is a saint, but it's orders of magnitude better at privacy than Facebook:
- Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app.
- Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time.
- Mostly compliant with GDPR for years prior to the regulation being released. The same can't be said for Facebook.
- Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations.
- I don't work on either right now, but at the time I did Google had way much better internal access controls for employees.
Amassing personal data can be considered unethical on some levels, but amassing personal data can't be equated with being bad at privacy. Among "personal data hoarders" Google is by far the most coginzant about keeping that data private.
> - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app.
If I remember well, Google was part of PRISM. And it did give data to a malicious state actors. Plus it has analytics, which you can pay to have data on people (although no personal, but personal data from facebook is aggregated and used the same way in the end). Also google let you literally google people to find any data that other service would leak.
It's not as bad, yes. But it's still a lot.
> Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time.
I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you.
And it's so big I doubt that any employee inside knows how everything works and everything that is done.
> Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations.
Now. But they've been at it for more time. I remember the early days of Google, and it was black SEO everywhere. It became only hard to game the system recently. Even when StackOverflow came out, we had so much spammy clones, and it's not that old.
It also came out at the cost of less relevant results: now I can always find instantly what I know I want, but rarely discover something I'm happy I found about that is related to my current search. The bubble is very strong.
> I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you.
Why would they take all that risk when they allow you to opt-out of targetted advertising?
Which risk. No actor has any way to verify that. It's incredibly complicated software, lost in the forest of their billions lines of code and thousand of servers.
Even if any actor had the will, the mean and the skills to check it out, and I doubt we had even two of that, the task is immense and the ability to hide high.
Add on top of that the power of a company that has the budget of a small country...
There is no important risk.
Now even if there were like 0.00001% of chance they get caught. So what ? What are the consequences ?
Bad PR ? Who cares, customers will forget in 3 months.
A fine ? Who cares, they can buy pay 10 times that before diner.
Prison ? Scape goats and lawyer will make sure it's not a problem.
In the age of information, Google obviously has disproportionate power. Society must raise awareness about concentration of power, post more about this topic, demand justice and transparency from the rulers. I think Google workers have special ethical responsibility to demand transparency and trust, organize and resist evil orders. We all have responsibility as a society to demand justice if we want a promising future.
Facebook never gave me anything of value in exchange for constantly monitoring and profilingmy behavior online. in fact, as it became ubiquitous,it added a new chore for me: maintaining ever changing privacy options on a defensive profile on their network.
So it takes peoples time, attention, and details on top of behavioral monitoring.
In contrast, Google provides me with a very competent productivity suite, a superb photo-managing software navigation, maps, aggregate traffic data,and a host of tools to actually build a business and educate myself and others.
Plus i get enterprise class security for my account and -arguably- the best web email service.
The day theres a data breach or in this case a breach of trust, im more likely to view google in a better light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook gets my contempt and scorn.
>Inb4 "well then don't use Facebook":
I don't. But that doesn't stop FB from building a shadow profile on me, so if I want some measure of control over my digital footprint, I have no choice or recourse but to open and maintain a defensive profile whose only purposes are
a) claim my username / URL used on most services where I'm provided with such a srfvixe, b) "squat" my name and likeness so I can't be unknowingly impersonated on their network and c) keep up with their ever changing privacy controls
>Inb4 "sounds like cringe material from Google's social team":
-I don't work for Google. I admit I'd love to, but I'm too old, perhaps. OTOH, I don't see how it's "cringe" since I succinctly describe the services the company does provide for me in exchange for my data and observing my behaviour; services I've used in making a living lately. Try making a living by developing on the FB platform, where every API Iteration makes you re-evaluate your business model.
71 comments
[ 18.7 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadAnd let’s never forget Eric Schmidt:
http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-pri...
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place;"
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo 12-7-09.
The "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it;"
Said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.
"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are;"
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the 2010 Techonomy conference.
"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about;"
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.
"It's a future where you don't forget anything…"In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time;"
Explained Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at TechCrunch, 9-28-10.
"No harm, no foul;" Concerning Google's unauthorized collection of WiFi signals from tens of millions of homes in 33 countries over three years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the Times of London in May 2010.
[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
The second issue is technological. The competing search engines are not there yet, although they're continuously improving. Google got where they are not only by text search, but also extending the search categories horizontally. The competing search engine would need some smart minds to come up with something extra, something genuinely useful that would make people flock there.
Then there are all other parts of Google ecosystem that people depend on: Gmail, Adwords, Adsense, GA. And millions of Android devices. How to eradicate all that from our lives? It will take decades to complete - if we started now, that is.
I find that duckduckgo is good enough for everything these days.
"I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." from 8/10/10 WSJ interview.
When you create a Google account, you're asked to provide your name, your gender, your date of birth, your location and your mobile phone number. Some of your most personal and private details, all of which will now be tied to your online behaviour.
That ceaseless data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do. It's quite horrible that this is happening - the kids don't even get a say, it's the adults who've decided this.
It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form and detached from user accounts, we don't know how that information could be mined or analysed either now or in the future. (In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the ginormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture).
And we've seen from Spotify and Netflix how even aggregated data can reveal very private and personal user behaviour.
Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy. Just because Google hasn't ever suffered a breach of user data, people say that Google can be trusted. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.
https://edu.google.com/k-12-solutions/privacy-security/
The G Suite for Education Privacy Notice [1] clearly states that Google collects device information, unique device identifiers, mobile network information (including phone number of the user). Also logged are IP addresses, location information, and app usage using unique application numbers.
Even if this information is detached from individual accounts and aggregated, it equals a phenomenal amount of data captured by Google on millions of students in the US.
[1] https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html
>You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.
Non sequitur conclusion from a faulty premise. If you're a Google user, then it's in your best interest that their security is up to par and they don't disappoint. I get enterprise class 2FA security to protect my data on my end and clear controls, opt-outs and buttons everywhere to delete all of my data from any particular service, plus I get to download such data in a useful, documented format for my own consumption, not some crippled html report I need to mine after the fact.
If you are NOT a Google user, though, not tracking you is not their duty, but a security breach on YOUR part, especially on the part of those who kbow better.
Its like a person walking naked in a public square, expecting that it was the city's duty to protect their privacy.
If you are Not a Google user and do not wish to be tracked by Google or Facebook or anyone for that matter, you need to assume responsibility for the security of your data and metadata by becoming as inconspicuous on the network as you can.
Again, it's nobody's duty but yours and failure to do so is a breach of your own security leading to leakage of your privacy.
They exist because of and for targeted advertising, everything else is just a means of getting there.
"Within company" is a meaningless distinction. It requires the assumption that Facebook or Google themselves are trustworthy, and smaller companies are not. But the big players themselves, are in fact, not trustworthy. So whether or not they sell the data or abuse it in-house is pretty much irrelevant.
Are you absolutely sure about that? Are you absolutely sure it will remain that way tomorrow, or next month?
This is exactly my point is it is clear you are consenting and have control and can opt out here: https://adssettings.google.com/. I am very aware of real-time bidding for ads works.
Also you shouldn't assume gender.
If you want to distract from the discussion at hand by making it about gender then that's on you.
As for 'consenting' and 'opting out' that's not how it should work, you don't 'consent' to being tracked by Google because you didn't opt out, that's Google assuming your consent (which, to tie it in with the previous bit is a lot more serious than assuming someone's gender).
Google absolutely shares that information with other firms:
https://developers.google.com/ad-exchange/rtb/start
The whole time I was using an Android phone with my google account logged in on the device, google recorded and retained basically everything. My location, without even me using the maps app. My old contacts which I deleted from my contacts lists were still in the records. Any IPv4 or IPv6 address my phone was assigned to. This was even more creepy than facebook's data trove. I deleted my data on facebook as far as I could and also the account (not just deactivated) and I deleted most of the data google had on me. The problem is that I only can assume that all the data is now gone, but how can I be sure?
Google might constantly assure that they handle everything with care, but the extent of their intrusion into my private life is really scary.
Google was recently found to track Android users' location even when they didn't have their GPS on. And they said it was a "bug". Like I'm just going to believe that from a company whose main objective is to track as much about us as possible.
But my point is the FTC should have slapped them with a major (at least tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending how long they've been doing it and to how many people) even if this was a bug.
If you tracked or collected data without users' consent, you get fined - bigly. No ifs or buts about it. Enough with the BS excuses and apology tours while they pocket billions from the "error" or "mistake."
And that's before we get into the kind of tricks and entity like Google or Facebook could pull if they decided to become an active participant rather than just a channel for advertising. If that hasn't already happened.
So, it's not the money that is the problem. It might have something to do with people, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Wanting more (which can be positive) paired with lack of empathy (which is not). People having both those traits should never ever put in a powerful position because they will eventually abuse their power for personal gain harming others in the process.
I am curious because I more or less came to that same hypothesis, but had no hard evidence. I noted before that when I turned on and off location services, the GPS lock was near instantaneous (i.e. when I turned on location, Google Maps located me with GPS precision immediately. There could be other ways of how this happens, it was noted in another post of mine, but that had still had me a bit suspicious. I replaced Google Play Services with microG recently (https://lineage.microg.org/). I then saw that it was MicroG, NOT the OS, that had control over my location, and MicroG still tracks my location when Location is off(https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...).
While none of this conclusively points to Google Play Services tracking me when it is off, the way that Android is set up makes me very strongly suspect that's what they did.
At least it gives some basic form of separation between my phone and the services I use - under the assumption that google services will have to request access to things.
Under google+android, I have no confidence that there won’t be accidental or intentional data harvesting. My wife’s Pixel 2 came with everything enabled by default and that data it Hoover’s up automatically is crazy.
BTW, if you want to have some fun, just try to imagine that the the government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it - either for the government itself or for election campaigns. IMO that makes a lot of their otherwise nonsensical or inconsistent behavior much more understandable. Creepy. They totally want to know more about us than Facebook and Google put together; they just don't know how.
Why can't it be both?
Serious question.
In fairness to the OP, the notion of someone being next is coming from the headline, not the comment.
"So they get a distorted view of it, and — and really we — congressmen get along more than the public thinks. But these attitudes of the public, we've got to change and people of your position and your influence, you can do a lot to change this.
Whether I know you got plenty time around your corporation, through your corporation or privately, anything you can do to reduce this cynicism because we have a — a perfect constitution, maybe it's not perfect, but we got a very good constitution — the longest one written constitution in the history of man — mankind.
And — but if people don't have faith in the institutions of government, and then it's — it's our responsibility to enhance that faith so they have less cynicism in us, you know, we don't have a very strong democracy just because we've got a good constitution.
So I hope that everybody will do whatever they can to help enhance respect for government, including speaking to myself. I got to bend over backwards to do what I can so they don't — so I don't add to that cynicism."
Don't forget ISPs and mobile phone service providers
government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it
Nah, they're just trying to look like they're doing something in response to public outcry.
Facebook actively employs dark patterns to get people to over-share. Google does not.
Facebook has a social graph of 2.2 billion people. Google does not.
Facebook has been caught repeatedly, systematically and recklessly leaking personal information to third parties over the last decade and a half. Google has not.
The 84 million profiles Facebook leaked to Cambridge Analytica is the headline, but it's far, far worse than this. Facebook quietly acknowledged that they've also leaked profiles of "most people on Facebook" to "malicious actors" [0]. There's nothing even close to this in the Google universe.
Facebook is the primary vector for subversion of democratic elections around the world (not only in the US, see for example the Philippines [1]). Google is not.
There are many alternatives to Google services that are a click away. There is no real alternative to Facebook.
So yes, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Snap, etc. have a lot of data, so they're on the list. But they're not in the same league as Facebook.
[0] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodri...
Once those (often unknown) companies have your MAC address, you can't turn your wifi on within range of a Starbucks without them having the capability to identify you and your location.
See also:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-...
The fact that no one has even raised a finger at Google, which by all accounts does a more pervasive job at monitoring people, speaks volumes on how well entrenched it is in media circles. The fact that Google can more or less kill any media outlet literally at a flick of a button is reason enough that it should be shut down hook, line and sinker.
At the same time, they’re at the size and momentum that they should always be under scrutiny even if the answer keeps coming back “yeah they seem to be acting responsibly”. We don’t want to have an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
It's time we learn what they know about us. I want to know.
- Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app.
- Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time.
- Mostly compliant with GDPR for years prior to the regulation being released. The same can't be said for Facebook.
- Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations.
- I don't work on either right now, but at the time I did Google had way much better internal access controls for employees.
Amassing personal data can be considered unethical on some levels, but amassing personal data can't be equated with being bad at privacy. Among "personal data hoarders" Google is by far the most coginzant about keeping that data private.
If I remember well, Google was part of PRISM. And it did give data to a malicious state actors. Plus it has analytics, which you can pay to have data on people (although no personal, but personal data from facebook is aggregated and used the same way in the end). Also google let you literally google people to find any data that other service would leak.
It's not as bad, yes. But it's still a lot.
> Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time.
I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you.
And it's so big I doubt that any employee inside knows how everything works and everything that is done.
> Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations.
Now. But they've been at it for more time. I remember the early days of Google, and it was black SEO everywhere. It became only hard to game the system recently. Even when StackOverflow came out, we had so much spammy clones, and it's not that old.
It also came out at the cost of less relevant results: now I can always find instantly what I know I want, but rarely discover something I'm happy I found about that is related to my current search. The bubble is very strong.
Why would they take all that risk when they allow you to opt-out of targetted advertising?
Even if any actor had the will, the mean and the skills to check it out, and I doubt we had even two of that, the task is immense and the ability to hide high.
Add on top of that the power of a company that has the budget of a small country...
There is no important risk.
Now even if there were like 0.00001% of chance they get caught. So what ? What are the consequences ?
Bad PR ? Who cares, customers will forget in 3 months.
A fine ? Who cares, they can buy pay 10 times that before diner.
Prison ? Scape goats and lawyer will make sure it's not a problem.
Facebook never gave me anything of value in exchange for constantly monitoring and profilingmy behavior online. in fact, as it became ubiquitous,it added a new chore for me: maintaining ever changing privacy options on a defensive profile on their network.
So it takes peoples time, attention, and details on top of behavioral monitoring.
In contrast, Google provides me with a very competent productivity suite, a superb photo-managing software navigation, maps, aggregate traffic data,and a host of tools to actually build a business and educate myself and others.
Plus i get enterprise class security for my account and -arguably- the best web email service.
The day theres a data breach or in this case a breach of trust, im more likely to view google in a better light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook gets my contempt and scorn.
>Inb4 "well then don't use Facebook": I don't. But that doesn't stop FB from building a shadow profile on me, so if I want some measure of control over my digital footprint, I have no choice or recourse but to open and maintain a defensive profile whose only purposes are a) claim my username / URL used on most services where I'm provided with such a srfvixe, b) "squat" my name and likeness so I can't be unknowingly impersonated on their network and c) keep up with their ever changing privacy controls
>Inb4 "sounds like cringe material from Google's social team": -I don't work for Google. I admit I'd love to, but I'm too old, perhaps. OTOH, I don't see how it's "cringe" since I succinctly describe the services the company does provide for me in exchange for my data and observing my behaviour; services I've used in making a living lately. Try making a living by developing on the FB platform, where every API Iteration makes you re-evaluate your business model.
https://hackernoon.com/why-facebook-is-the-perfect-represent...