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Posted by Greg Skinner on May 3, 2005, 7:41 pm
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> Google Eyes
> The company everyone loves knows more about you than you might realize.
> BY DAN KENNEDY
> Google knows. According to Lauren Weinstein, an internet activist and
> privacy expert based in southern California, Google keeps track of
> every search that's made, as well as the internet location of the
> computer from which the search is taking place -- and then it stores
> that information for possible future use. Moreover, he said, it would
> not be terribly difficult to trace those searches to the person who
> made them. That's you and me.
> http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2005-02-02/feature.asp
This is old news. In fact, for quite some time, search engines,
portals, and other large information-oriented sites have kept track of
this information.
Perhaps Google should put a disclaimer on their usage policy stating
something like "your IP address may be linked to you through the use
of address registries and/or your ISP usage records," but would it
matter? (It's not as if the vast majority of Google's or any other
search engine's users read the privacy policies.)
People have decided (for whatever reasons) that it is worth releasing
some of their "personal" information in exchange for the "free" use of
search engines, portals, etc. I don't expect this to change anytime
soon. Furthermore, I don't think law-abiding individuals have
anything to worry about.
At the very least, if Google is going to be the target of such
criticism, it should be applied to other large search engines and
portals as well.
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