Agorism
02-27-2012, 12:23 PM
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/27/googlegeddon-approaches-how-to-protect-yourself
In three days from now, Google will implement a unified privacy policy that will allow it to mix data about user activity from all of its different services, creating a huge database that details people’s interests and activities.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good article about this coming event. The article gives a little tip about how to erase your web search history: You have to go to Google.com/history and clear your web history.
Doing this clears the history of your use of the Google search engine, but it doesn’t affect the data collected about your use of the other Google services. So, taking this action might prevent Google from using all your search data from the last several years to share a consumer profile of you with its corporate customers… for a while.
What will not happen, an EFF appendix to its article explains, is the actual destruction of the history of all your web searches through Google. The data will remain – it just won’t be hooked up functionally to your search engine experience at Google.com. When you use Google services, you’ll have to trust that Google won’t do anything inappropriate with the information, and hope that the federal government, using its Homeland Security powers, won’t simply grab it for integration into its Total Information Awareness system.
What else can you do? Don’t use Google.
Don’t use YouTube. Use another service. Don’t use Gmail. Use another email system. Don’t use Google documents, or Google’s calendar. Don’t read the news through Google News. Don’t blog on Blogger, and don’t Google Plus. There are alternatives, and you can organize them yourself, rather than making Google your one-stop location for navigating online.
Google has gotten too big for its britches, and like Microsoft before it, is abusing its power. It’s time to walk away.
Start with your search engine habits. Search alternatives that maintain your privacy include:
Startpage
Duck Duck Go
Yacy
Yippy
In three days from now, Google will implement a unified privacy policy that will allow it to mix data about user activity from all of its different services, creating a huge database that details people’s interests and activities.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good article about this coming event. The article gives a little tip about how to erase your web search history: You have to go to Google.com/history and clear your web history.
Doing this clears the history of your use of the Google search engine, but it doesn’t affect the data collected about your use of the other Google services. So, taking this action might prevent Google from using all your search data from the last several years to share a consumer profile of you with its corporate customers… for a while.
What will not happen, an EFF appendix to its article explains, is the actual destruction of the history of all your web searches through Google. The data will remain – it just won’t be hooked up functionally to your search engine experience at Google.com. When you use Google services, you’ll have to trust that Google won’t do anything inappropriate with the information, and hope that the federal government, using its Homeland Security powers, won’t simply grab it for integration into its Total Information Awareness system.
What else can you do? Don’t use Google.
Don’t use YouTube. Use another service. Don’t use Gmail. Use another email system. Don’t use Google documents, or Google’s calendar. Don’t read the news through Google News. Don’t blog on Blogger, and don’t Google Plus. There are alternatives, and you can organize them yourself, rather than making Google your one-stop location for navigating online.
Google has gotten too big for its britches, and like Microsoft before it, is abusing its power. It’s time to walk away.
Start with your search engine habits. Search alternatives that maintain your privacy include:
Startpage
Duck Duck Go
Yacy
Yippy