Google’s
new privacy policy comes into operation. Now most of us probably didn’t read
the first draft when we signed up for Gmail. But it’s time that we read
Google’s new privacy policy, partly because we use a number of Google products
ranging from search to mail to Chrome to YouTube, and mostly because the policy
aims at collecting information about Google users and is across its products.
You can view the entire policy for your Google account by clicking on this
link.
Microsoft which is on the war path with Google has already
launched a complaint with EU regulators against Google’s new social networking
site, Google +. This is probably because Google’s new search
policy means that
links which get a plus are likely to feature more prominently in search
results. For example if your friend clicked plus on a link it’s likely to
feature in your results since Google + is now an integral part of search. The
Google-advertiser nexus, is also quite annoying for the average Gmail user. But
what is clear is that information you give to Google profile is riddled with
privacy loopholes.
For those who are really paranoid about how Google is using
your information, there is the option of going off the grid, which is
basically, press delete, delete as many times as possible, then swear you’ll
never use Google search, or YouTube again. And while you’re frantically
deleting your Internet history, don’t forget to flush your Android down the
toilet.
Google privacy policy is going to change tom. AP
For the rest of us who wish to use Google without giving out
information that we don’t want to, here are two steps you can take.PC
World has a detailed post on how to take
your privacy a bit more seriously.
First and foremost go
to your Google account settings and disable your web search history. For
detailed steps on how to go about doing this, click on this link from eff.org.
It’s probably the most important step you can take to ensure
that you what search for online doesn’t stay with Google. It might seem trivial
that Google is collecting your search data, but it matters because it reveals a
lot about user interests, preferences, political orientations, etc. Some of
this might not be information you want to share with the world and it’s
perfectly legitimate to regulate this.
The other big major step to take is go to the
Google.com/dashboard. You can log with
your account and see all the information that Google has related to your
account, which is linked to all the products you use. The dashboard will let
you change your privacy settings for each Google product. If you’ve never used
this before you might see that nearly everything you put out is public and it’s
probably best to change that option.
Yes Google has informed us well in advance of the change in
it’s privacy policy. The policy is
obviously going to be subject to some serious scrutiny in the coming days, but
as users we can control to some extent what information is going out publicly.
nice job....
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