How Google Keep Track
THE END USER
A Voice for the consumer
How Google Keep Track
By Victoria Shannon
Paris
When Google announced a change in its privacy policy last week, it got some gushing headlines like, “Google adopt tougher privacy safeguards”.
But upon closer examination, it seems the change was not to protect your privacy on the Web as much as it was simply to give you a little more information about how Google maintains your personal data.
Google’s adjustment was that in stead of retaining user search data for “as long as it is useful” now the company will keep the information for at least 18 month and no longer than 24 month.
In some cases, that will shorten the time Google holds on to such data, which can, in theory, be used to identify individual users and their personal interests.
But the guidelines also mean that search data will sometimes be kept for a longer period than now, according to Peter Fleischer, privacy counsel for Google in
For most of us, keeping personal information private on the Web is a defensive tool: When we are anonymous in our travels on the Web, we can better protect our bank accounts, our children and even our political proclivities in place where just having some in dangerous.
But for other people, privacy is the opposite of security – the more disclosure of personal data, the more trails of information that law enforcement agencies and governments can follow to find those who are stealing credit card numbers, circulating child pornography or organizing terrorist activities.
A third interest group is the world of Internet companies, retail companies and advertisers, all of which could profit commercially from the correct interpretation or sale of the collected data.
Google’s privacy policies are the company’s best efforts to address all of these concerns as well as its own business interests, Fleischer said.
“Privacy decisions are not made in a vacuum,” he said in interview. “It is really balance of a number of factors. If it were just a matter of privacy, we could consider a shorter time period.”
That, in fact, is one of the concerns of privacy advocates – that 24 months is too long for a private company to hold on the potentially incriminating data.
But that length of time was already set as the out site limit by the European Commission when it adopted its Data Retention Directive last year; Fleischer said the U.S. Department of Justice was also proposing a two-year windows for data retention by Internet and telephone companies. Google and other Internet companies are just getting in line.
Still, Fleischer also said the vast majority of data requests from security agencies to Google were for only the past six months or less of collected information. If that is universally true, perhaps European
There are ways you can stop Google
From collecting some of this
data to begin with.
governments that want to err on the side of individual privacy will adopt data-retention laws that default to that minimum, which is permissible under the directive, rather than the 24-month maximum allowed.
But don’t get your hopes up that such moves would give Google and its search brethren a new standard to follow. Fleischer made clear that Google did not intend for its brand-new two-year rule to be starting point on the way to an ever-shrinking data-retention period.
For ordinary Internet users, the most useful information out of last week’s discussion was the fact that, under certain circumstances, you can stop Google from collecting some of this data to begin with.
This trick works only when you are logged in to a Google service, like Gmail of Google Talk. Other wise, you have no way to control Google’s data collection; its logs are automatically generated every time someone does a search.
Here are the steps I took from my Gmail account to stop the company from saving my searches while I am logged into a Google service: Sign in to Gmail; click setting; click account; click Google account setting; click search history; sign in again; click search history; click select all; click pause; click save setting.
May be there are already easier ways. But if Google want to be “open and transparent,” as executive insist that it does, I’m sure the company will make this and other privacy measure even simpler for individuals in future.
Title (article) : THE END USER: A Voice for the consumer
How Google Keep Track
By Victoria Shannon
- E-mail comment to tech@iht.com
From : International Herald Tribune, Thursday, March 22, 2007 (page 21)
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