What’s up with Google’s Privacy Policy?
Google makes new changes to Privacy Policy
Google’s new Privacy policy has been causing a big stir this month.
In the last month the internet has been set alight by the ramblings of human rights activists and internet blog sites going mad with scary headlines, and predictions of a gloomy ”Internet Overload” in the style of George Orwell’s 1984. So what’s the truth of the matter and should you be worried about these changes?
What’s actually changing?
Google main change is they will be having one unified privacy policy that covers all of the businesses and websites. i.e. YouTube, Google Search, Google buzz, Google Mail, Google Calender, Google Maps etc.
The idea is to simplify and enable the integration of user data across all of Google platforms. Which will enable them to Taylor advertising to an individuals taste based on a users browsing, search and internet activity.
What is the problem?
The main issue that Google’s user base are having is concerned about having so much personal data stored into one neat little package from the company to use. Worried that Google might end up knowing more about them then some of their own family members. Google representatives have repeatedly stated that they are not collecting any new information, just collating it. Of course this isn’t very reassuring for most people and if you don’t want to opt out of the data collection there is a very simple way to do it.
To Delete your history within Google simply Sign into your Google Account, go to https://www.google.com/history, click “remove all Web History” and click “OK” .
Simple as that.
Although it should be noted that if Google really had evil intentions. It would of been more worrying if they had been consolidating the data behind closed doors. They have access to all the information, there wouldn’t be much of a legal issue for Google to be consolidation information without a users permission. Google made the changes in their new policy very public, it was posted at the header of every website they own, plastered so in your face, that it was actually getting quite annoying. Given these facts, people should probably take these changes in Google’s privacy policy as a sign of honesty on Google’s behalf. Rather than the move of a sinister evil internet empire.
That being said, even though the policy is described as a simplified version, it is extremely complicated to understand. Even privacy specialists seem to be having a tough time getting the heads around some of the technical jargon intertwined through out the policy. Which has obviously made a lot of users suspicious that Google has something to hide.
But more and more, in the world of the data age. The only way you can avoid large amounts of data being collected about you and your every move, is just to avoid using the internet or any technology altogether. So it’s something we might just have to get used to.
At least if we have company’s like Google are being honest enough to make us aware of what they are collecting, we can take possible measures against being tracked.
