Google says privacy should not be expected

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

It's the public's fault that Google got this big to begin with. I was happily using WebCrawler and Yahoo's search engines back in the day before Google got shoved onto everyone's faces. It's not like you're going to willingly pay to use a search engine, so they have to find another way to make money, and well, "invading" your privacy as some people see it, is just the thing that works.

I think I was the last webcrawler user. I only started using Google very late in college, mostly because it gave better results and you could turn safe browsing off if you wanted to.

Thing was, Google offered (and still does offer in a lot of cases) the best services out there. That's why people started using it. It beat Webcrawler and Lycos hands down, and MSN/Bing never stood a chance. MSN sort of shot itself in the foot with those commercials about Censor Butterfly, though.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by teh603

It beat Webcrawler and Lycos hands down, and MSN/Bing never stood a chance. MSN sort of shot itself in the foot with those commercials about Censor Butterfly, though.

Altavista here until Google got the better of me (sometime in pre-2000).

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Altavista here until Google got the better of me (sometime in pre-2000).

Hey, me too! I was also an altavista.net email address for many years, until I got my own domain name.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by ApK

Hey, me too! I was also an altavista.net email address for many years, until I got my own domain name.

In college, they even had obligatory lab classes teaching us how to do searches on Altavista.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

In college, they even had obligatory lab classes teaching us how to do searches on Altavista.

Hey, if the prof says to use Altavista, you better use it. They'd probably check the router logs to make sure of it.

Course they never seemed to know enough about typography to tell the difference between Times 12, and Times New Roman 12. Guess which one will trim a page off your finished research paper? (hint, it's one of the MS core fonts)

[Jessica Lares]

Yeah, I remember logging into the computers up at the school one weekend and seeing the Google homepage for the first time. Had to be like 1999 as these machines were most likely running Windows 98.

Otherwise it was Webcrawler/Yahoo since the 3.1/Netscape days. Those were the two my dad showed me how to use.

And yeah, they do still offer the better service.

I miss using a directory though.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by teh603

Course they never seemed to know enough about typography to tell the difference between Times 12, and Times New Roman 12. Guess which one will trim a page off your finished research paper? (hint, it's one of the MS core fonts)

Comic Sans MS?

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Comic Sans MS?

lol

Actually, Times New Roman. It renders one to two points (points, as in 1/72 of an inch) smaller than the original Times family. Course most of the profs I had were so typography- inept I could use Bookman and get an extra point per line (for around 3/72" bigger than TNR).

[Alexander Turcic]

Regarding keeping emails private and using client-side encryption, this one makes an interesting read:

Encryption is less secure than we thought (MIT News)

“It’s still exponentially hard, but it’s exponentially easier than we thought,” Duffy says. One implication is that an attacker who simply relied on the frequencies with which letters occur in English words could probably guess a user-selected password much more quickly than was previously thought. “Attackers often use graphics processors to distribute the problem,” Duffy says. “You’d be surprised at how quickly you can guess stuff.”

[soulfuldog]

Isn't the scanning of emails basically just a computer checking for various keywords to help target ads? And if so, how much an invasion of privacy is it really?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Altavista here until Google got the better of me (sometime in pre-2000).

Ditto.
I stuck with Altavista until Yahoo folded it into their system.
I have a gmail account to tie down my name and log in to android systems that require it but don't use it for mail.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

And neither does the Postal Service. They just send whatever you give them. If you want security, you go out and buy envelopes.

In a purely technical sense, you're incorrect. There are different stamps with different rates (in the U.S., anyway) for postcards and first-class envelopes. Different rates = different services.

Furthermore, I think it's stretching a bit to equate the difficulty of setting up PGP to work with Gmail with that of buying an envelope.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

If you don't, every mail sorter along the way can read your postcard. It's your responsibility, not the Post Office.

I don't care if every mail sorter reads my postcard. My beef is with the equivalent of entering all of them into a database that can correlate this postcard with my other postcards and everyone else's as well.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

There is no and there should be no expectation of privacy.

I understand that there isn't in fact (and that it's unlikely to get better), but I don't understand why anyone (except Google) would claim that there shouldn't.

Originally Posted by l_macd

Isn't the scanning of emails basically just a computer checking for various keywords to help target ads? And if so, how much an invasion of privacy is it really?

As a quick example, there's nothing preventing Google from parsing Amazon receipts and recording what you've bought in the past and how much you've paid for it. At that point, they don't know any more than Amazon, but then if they parse receipts from other online stores, Google then knows more about your purchasing habits than any of the individual stores. They can then sell access to that information back to the vendors. It would be relatively easy to figure out if you shop around for a good price or if you pay whatever your favorite vendor charges. From an economic/negotiation perspective, that creates a huge information asymmetry and it's to your disadvantage. So far Google doesn't appear to have leveraged it ("Don't be evil" and all that), but bear in mind that what they're currently asking the court for is the legal latitude to do those kinds of things (or rather, to have the court affirm that they already had it).

[Kaitou Ace]

That's not really it here.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by frahse

If you are on the internet, you forgo some privacy. The more you want done for you, the more you lose.

No question about it but there needs to be limits. If a woman goes outside wearing a skirt and no underwear I don't believe she's given up all right to privacy. If she walks into a business whose 100 page term of service says that they are able to photograph you, I don't believe it's OK for them to have cameras on the floor and sell the photos. We as a society don't accept that but the same debates haven't happened with service providers on the internet. It's not going to happen unless people are educated about it and have open discussions about it. I believe that too many people just throw up their hands and say the battle has been lost when it hasn't begun.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

II don't care if every mail sorter reads my postcard. My beef is with the equivalent of entering all of them into a database that can correlate this postcard with my other postcards and everyone else's as well.

Where did *this* come from? None of the linked articles mention building email databases. Can you point me to something *reliable* that says Google is building an email database? They are most certainly scanning email for spam and to add (hopefully) relevant ads.

Once again, *all* email providers have the ability to provide the government with details of your email. Always have. Always will.