Disturbing Facts About Google

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Sun, 4 Dec 2005 08:55:53 -0800 (PST)

Disturbing Facts About Google

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.rinf.com/news/nov05/googlefacts.html

 

 

 

 

Disturbing Facts About Google

 

Published: 12/04/2005

 

Google are clearly gathering information about us

but refuse to tell us why. It's nothing new to us,

but while they cannot control normal SERPs,

they do however control who is viewing what and when.

 

We run Google adverts in order to survive. Does this mean

we shouldn't share the information below? If you know

an alternative way to sustain costs please get in touch.

 

Please note, Google does not track you

by simply viewing pages containing their adverts.

 

1. Google's immortal cookie:

 

Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that

expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites

were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether.

Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace

among search engines ; Google set the standard because no one

bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique

ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google

page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one.

If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

 

2. Google records everything they can:

 

For all searches they record the

- cookie ID,- your Internet IP address,

- the time and date,- your search terms,

- and your browser configuration. Increasingly,

Google is customizing results based on your IP number.

This is referred to in the industry as

" IP delivery based on geolocation. "

 

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:

Google has no data retention policies.

There is evidence that they are able to easily access

all the user information they collect and save.

 

4. Google won't say why they need this data:

Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New

York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin

about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed

for this information, he had no comment.

 

5. Google hires spooks:

 

Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer,

used to work for the National Security Agency.

Google wants to hire more people with security clearances,

so that they can peddle their corporate assets

to the Spooks in Washington.

 

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:

 

With the advanced features enabled,

Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home

with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too.

Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only

because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit

when their toolbar did the same thing,

and their privacy policy failed to explain this.

 

Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates

to new versions quietly,and without asking.

This means that if you have the toolbar installed,

Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk

every time you connect to Google(which is many times a day).

 

Most software vendors, and even Microsoft,

ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google.

Any software that updates automatically,

presents a massive security risk.

 

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:

 

Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application

of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet,

Google's cache copy appears to be illegal.

The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached

on Google is to put a " noarchive " meta

in the header of every page on his site.

 

Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't.

Many webmasters have deleted questionable material

from their sites, only to discover later that the problem

pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy

should be " opt-in " for webmasters, not " opt-out. "

 

8. Google is not your friend:

 

By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to

most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these

days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site.

If they try to take advantage of some of the known

weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms,

they may find themselves penalized by Google,

and their traffic disappears.

There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google,

and there is no appeal process for penalized sites.

Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time

Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.

 

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:

With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google

amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen.

Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats

in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick

efficiency that Google has already achieved.

 

google-watch

 

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