July 27, 2010
Tip of the Week: February 15th, 2010
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Google History and YourPrivacy
By John Sileo
www.ThinkLikeaSpy.com


What started in 1997 as aresearch project and a mission as the way to organize the world'sinformation has turned into the world's largest search engine. Googlehas given anyone with an Internet connection access to more informationthan they realize. With such quick access to information, you need tobe careful what you put on the World Wide Web and realize what iscontained in your Google History. Remember, posts -- and searches-- are permanent. Here are a few privacy issues when it comes toGoogle:
  1. Google's Cookie and Toolbar. Whenyou use their search engine, Google places a self-renewing cookie witha unique ID number on your hard disk. As you search websites, Googlerecords your surfing activity and saves your searches. There are waysto change your Internet options to stop the cookie tracking and you canlearn more by visiting www.google.com/support/accounts/. Remember, nothing you do on the Internet is private; it is all tracked,aggregated, analyzed, sold and used for a variety of purposes (many ofthem good). The advanced features of Google's new toolbar for InternetExplorer not only updates automatically, but it also tracks whichwebsites you visit.
  2. Google Mail. Google's mail service,or Gmail offers users free webmail. What most users will notice are thetargeted ads that appear on the right side and above your email.According to Google's privacy page they state "Google believes thatshowing relevant advertising offers more value to users than displayingrandom pop-ups or untargeted banner ads. In Gmail, users will see textads and links to related pages that are relevant to the content oftheir messages#133;. No email content or other personally identifiableinformation is ever shared with advertisers." Although they may notdirectly be sharing the content of your email messages withadvertisers, they are being scanned for content and populated withrelevant advertising. Most people and businesses probably don'tconsider an email that has been scanned by others to be truly private.
  3. Google Docs. Google Docs is anamazingly powerful platform that essentially replaces Microsoft'sOffice on your computer. This has many advantages. It is considerablyless expensive, always up to date and available from any computerconnected to the Internet. It gives you freedom of computing, sharingand collaboration not available when your documents are available onlyon a physical hard disk. It is rapidly being adopted as the officesuite of choice by governments, education systems and businesses. Butas with any web-based application, there are privacy concerns.
Google's profit model is based oncollecting, indexing and sharing as much information as possible abouteveryone who uses its suite of tools. Because Google dominates thesearch engine market, websites, businesses and individuals are highlydependent on them. This dependency gives us a good excuse to overlookprivacy issues with the company (Gmail is so useful, I couldn't livewithout it, even if I'm losing some of my privacy). The solution is notto stop using Google, the Internet or web-based tools. It is to beconscious and discriminating of how you use the tools.

About the author: John Sileo became America'sleading IdentityTheft Speaker amp; Expert after he lost his business and morethan $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients includethe Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To further bulletproofyourself and your business, visit John's blog at Sileo.com. To book John at yournext event, visit www.ThinkLikeaSpy.com. Permissiongranted foruse onDrLaura.com

Posted by Staff at 7:23 PM