Google borrows Facebook's privacy manual
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What's behind the latest privacy cockup? Google can count itself fortunate that a serious privacy storm it caused took place in the run up to Christmas - when world+dog was otherwise occupied. By altering the behaviour of one of its web-services, Google ran foul of its own Privacy guarantee - and continues to violate it.â¦
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Blog: By using the new AskEraser tool, users will be able to set their privacy preferences so the search engine does not retain their Web search history.
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. will make the data it stores about end users anonymous in its server logs after 18 months, part of an effort to deflate concerns about privacy raised last month by a European Union working group. In a letter sent to the group on Monday, Google also said it is looking at ways to redesign its Web cookies and reduce the length of time they are stored on users' PCs. Cookies are small files that uniquely identify a Web browser and are widely used to track surfing behavior and store user preferences. The letter, from Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, was in response to a letter sent last month by the E.U.'s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which outlined its concerns about Google's service. Among them, it questioned why the company needed to retain its server logs for 18 to 24 months, saying the practice does not appear to meet Europe's data protection rules. The server logs, which include search histories, can be linked to individual users and therefore constitute personal data, the group said. Fleischer responded by saying that Google would make data anonymous in its server logs after 18 months, the low end of its previous commitment. "We ... firmly reject any suggestions that we could meet our legitimate interests in security, innovation and anti-fraud efforts with any retention periods shorter than 18 months," Fleischer wrote. The company said it needs the log data to improve its search algorithms, fight click fraud and spam, comply with data retention laws, and meet "valid legal orders from law enforcement as they investigate and prosecute serious crimes like child exploitation." It noted that the E.U.'s own Data Retention Directive will require companies to retain such data for 6 to 18 months when new laws go into effect by 2009. Since few countries have passed their retention laws yet, "we have no choice but to be prepared to retain log data for up to 24 months," Fleischer wrote. The working group had also complained about the length of time Google stores cookies on users' PCs. Google said that it is exploring ways to redesign its cookies to improve privacy and that it would make an announcement "in the coming months." One observer, while acknowledging privacy concerns about Google, was critical of the working group for singling out one company. "These concerns would have been equally applicable to Yahoo or Microsoft or many other companies on the Internet," said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Web site Search Engine Land, who wrote a detailed analysis of Google's response. Microsoft and Yahoo have not specified how long they store their log files, he said, and they may retain them for longer than Google. He also said the group showed "technical ignorance" by focussing on server logs. Like other search engines, Google collects information about users each time they register for a service such as Gmail or Adwords. These "user databases" contain more personal information than server logs can gather, and they are often retained until a user closes the account or actively deletes the information, he said. The working group in its letter last month cited Google's "market position and ever-growing dominance." It also thanked the company for its "ongoing engagement with the data protection community," especially in contrast with "a lack of engagement by some of the other leading players" in the search industry. The group is expected to discuss Google's response at a meeting later this month. Â
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Web search leader Google  Inc., which stores vast amounts of data on the Web surfing  habits of its users, sees government intrusions rather than  accidental public disclosures of data as the greatest threat to  online privacy, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
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Google Inc , the world's  largest Internet company, will propose at a meeting of  international policymakers in France on Friday that national  regulators agree on a basic set of global privacy protections.
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The secret of Facebook's success,  and its future viability, hinges on how the social network site  protects privacy, taming the anything-goes intrusiveness of  what might as well be known as the World Wild Web.
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Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it has fixed a software flaw that could allow hackers to view information contained on personal computers running the No.
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Google posts new videos on YouTube explaining its privacy settings in products as part of a privacy offensive.
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Fast-growing U.S. social network   Web site Facebook said on Friday it has adopted new privacy   controls following an unprecedented online backlash over a new   feature that let users track their friends online.
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Google has announced a new desktop search application that enables users to search their e-mail, files, web history, and chats. Perhaps learning from previous mistakes, Google says it has designed the product &quot;from the ground up to respect user privacy.
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Search engine giant Google is to cut the length of time that it retains users' personally identifiable data.
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People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google&#39;s free tool that indexes a PC&#39;s contents for quickly locating data.
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(InfoWorld) - When it comes to protecting the privacy of its users, Google ranks worse than any other Internet company, according to an interim report by Privacy International. The international watchdog group also accused Google of engaging in a smear campaign in response to its findings and demanded an apology. Privacy International's findings, based on six months of research, placed Google at the bottom of 23 Internet companies examined by the group. Google was the only company to earn the bottom ranking for "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." Other companies, such as Microsoft and Yahoo, rated slightly better that Google. Microsoft was given a rating of four out of six for "serious lapses in privacy practices." Yahoo was given a ranking of five of six, one better than Google, for "substantial and comprehensive privacy threats." "We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research, we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations," Privacy International said. In particular, the group cited the large amount of data that Google collects about its users and lack of privacy controls. "Google's increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user's life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook," Privacy International said. "Neither of these elements has been demonstrated." Privacy International plans to issue a final report in September. Google executives were not immediately available to comment on the report's findings. But an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Privacy International Director Simon Davies accused the company of engaging in a smear campaign in response to the group's findings. "Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that 'Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft.' I presume this was motivated because Microsoft scored an overall better result than Google in the rankings," Davies wrote. Google allegedly claimed a conflict of interest exist because one of 70 people on Privacy International's board of advisors is a current Microsoft employee. Davies rejected the charge and listed five critical actions the group has taken against Microsoft, including support for the European Commission's investigation into Microsoft. "Can I be so bold as to suggest that your company's actions stem from sour grapes that you achieved the lowest ranking amongst the Internet giants?" Davies wrote, demanding an apology from Schmidt. This isn't the first time that Privacy International has raised privacy concerns about Google. In 2004, the group filed a privacy complaint over Google's Gmail service with regulators in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Australia, and Canada, as well as with the European Commission. To date, Google has rejected concerns over the information it gathers and stores about users. Speaking recently in South Korea, Schmidt dismissed privacy concerns over the data collected by the company, saying users worried about privacy can always choose not to use the company's services. He also said Google deletes information about users after a certain period of time but did not say how long that period is. Privacy concerns about Google have also been raised overÂ the company's acquisition of DoubleClick, sparking anÂ investigation by the U.S. Fair Trade Commission (FTC). That investigation is ongoing. While Google has taken flack from critics for its privacy policies, the company has acted to protect users in at least one case: In January 2006, Google was the only company to resist a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoena for a random sampling of 1 million Web addresses that users searched for. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo did not fight the DOJ's request, which did not seek information that would have identified the users who made the search requests contained in the sample. Ultimately, Google shared a smaller amount of data with the DOJ.
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. has developed new tools it says will make it easier for webmasters and publishers of news sites to control how the search engine indexes their content for inclusion in the Google News portal. As of Tuesday, publishers of English-language news sites indexed by Google News will be able to include them in Google's Webmaster Tools service . This means that publishers and webmasters will be able to specify through a site map the articles they want Google News to index. A site map is a file that webmasters and publishers put on their sites to guide search engines' automated Web crawlers in properly indexing their Web pages. Webmasters and publishers will also be able to see a list of their latest articles featured on Google News, as well as a list of indexing errors made by the automated Google crawler, so that the problems can be addressed. Previously, publishers' control over Google News' indexing was more rudimentary, limited mostly to including an instruction to prevent the crawler from accessing certain pages. Before launching the new site map tools, the company tested them with several news organizations, said Nathan Stoll, Google News product manager. Stoll said publishers had asked for more "transparency and control" of what content is indexed specifically by Google News Google News is a portal for news in which Google aggregates headlines, short text snippets and thumbnail pictures linked to the original articles on news organizations' Web sites.Â Google News is at the center of a lawsuit brought by the news agency Agence France Presse,Â which alleges copyright infringement from Google's inclusion of its material on the portal. Tuesday's announcement follows last week's news thatÂ Google, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. will support the open source, XML-based Sitemap Protocol. This protocol, which was developed by Google, will simplify how webmasters and online publishers submit their sites' content for indexing in the companies' search engines. (Mike Barton is online editor of InfoWorld.) Â
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Nearly lost in the news about the&#160;U.S. Federal Trade Commission&#39;s (FTC) approval on Thursday of Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;was another action by the agency: The publication of a proposed set of privacy principles governing online behavioral advertising.
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Not long ago, Google was the cuddly search engine that could. Now it's a bona fide data monster, and your personal information is its meat.
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Social networking sites like Facebook have wooed millions of users with their easy format for keeping in touch but left them navigating the pitfalls of interacting online -- is it really private?