It has been known for some time that "big brother" is always watching. Being spied on is as American as apple pie, baseball and Playboy Magazines. But starting March 1, one of our advocates for keeping its users' anonymity is now breaking a long established promise.
"In a privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services—Gmail, Search, YouTube and more—and sharing data on user activity across all of them. So much for the Google we signed up for."
"This has been long coming. Google's privacy policies have been shifting towards sharing data across services, and away from data compartmentalization for some time. It's been consistently de-anonymizing you, initially requiring real names with Plus, for example, and then tying your Plus account to your Gmail account. But this is an entirely new level of sharing. And given all of the negative feedback that it had with Google+ privacy issues, it's especially troubling that it would take actions that further erode users' privacy."
"So why are we calling this evil? Because Google changed the rules that it defined itself. Google built its reputation, and its multi-billion dollar business, on the promise of its 'don't be evil' philosophy. That's been largely interpreted as meaning that Google will always put its users first, an interpretation that Google has cultivated and encouraged. Google has built a very lucrative company on the reputation of user respect. It has made billions of dollars in that effort to get us all under its feel-good tent. And now it's pulling the stakes out, collapsing it. It gives you a few weeks to pull your data out, using its data-liberation service, but if you want to use Google services, you have to agree to these rules."
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Google might as well play "Private Eyes" by Hall and Oates while you search for any information. With SOPA and PIPA having been defeated, this looks like a smack in the face of ardent Google users. Question that all internet users need to ask themselves is if this new change in Google’s tactics hasn’t set things up for the government to monitor internet users in a different way? Conspiracy theorists unite.
[Source: gizmodo]
KAsadullah is a poet, emcee and a comic book geek. Check him out on FaceBook or Twitter for more information.