jg24 3707 Report post Posted January 27, 2012 Google on March 1 is introducing new Privacy Guildlines http://www.google.ca/intl/en/policies/privacy/preview/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RubJunky 1954 Report post Posted January 27, 2012 Yes and many people I chat with on the boards are dropping their gmail accounts due to this new loose-privacy policy. My problem with it is that you can not sign someone up on under one policy and then change it, I understand changing a policy for tighter protocols but to make it available to everyone under the Google umbrella is wrong. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Phaedrus 209521 Report post Posted January 28, 2012 Yes and many people I chat with on the boards are dropping their gmail accounts due to this new loose-privacy policy. My problem with it is that you can not sign someone up on under one policy and then change it, Ye,s you can. All kinds of service companies do this all the time. It's not just the likes of Google and FB; how often do you get letters from your bank/credit card/phone/cable/insurance companies with some change to the terms and conditions? As long as they give you reasonable notice and the chance to opt out and quit the service without penalties, it's OK. Annoying as hell, that I'll grant you... but not illegal, nor even particularly unreasonable. I understand changing a policy for tighter protocols but to make it available to everyone under the Google umbrella is wrong. I don't really have a problem with it; it's probably better than the 50-odd policies they have for various things at the moment. The real thing driving this is their quest to get one over FB; the point here is merging all the services they offer so that they can pretend that everyone who uses Google-anything is an enthusiastic Google+ user. The vast majority of people won't shut down accounts over this. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nobody123 518 Report post Posted January 29, 2012 The real thing driving this is their quest to get one over FB; the point here is merging all the services they offer so that they can pretend that everyone who uses Google-anything is an enthusiastic Google+ user. The vast majority of people won't shut down accounts over this. It's quite a bit more insidious than that. One thing that the "new improved" google does for you by default is list its own social network (Google+) results first during google web searches now (as opposed to the usual method of most popular results first). No biggie, right? But when you search for John Q Examplename, and the first thing you see is that he only has 4 people in his Google+ circle, and that he hasn't posted anything on/through/with Google+ in three months, you may leap to the wrong conclusions (wrong person, insignificant person, useless source, whatever) without noticing his 750,000 facebook friends, or 10-tweet-a-day habit to 2 million followers. Far, far, far worse, however, is the increasingly byzantine system of opt-outs and use of personalized results and information by google. They keep collecting more and more detailed profiles of you and your internet use, all while making it more and more difficult to keep said profiles as private as you'd like. It's already bad enough worrying that Auntie Bertha will check her email on your computer during a family dinner and get a chance to wonder why all the recommended videos are of Japanese schoolgirls farting on middle-aged men. (or even more disturbing, Auntie Bertha forgets to log out and you discover that the last dozen videos SHE watched on YouTube were of some mind-scarringly twisted fetish.) How much worse will it be when this kind of unintentional sharing gets even more cross-platform and muddled? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nobody123 518 Report post Posted February 1, 2012 And of course, the onion already has it covered: http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy%2c14358/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
