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.

Now what????

i really don't care. let them have anything they want.

IstenSzek said:

Exactly!.. Hey, they are there when ya need them ..

TheCatWoman said:

people are too obsessed with their data being recorded.
they want safety and monitoring of peace yet they dont
want anybody knowing they like to look at knobs whilst
they surf the internet?

it's hardly like the feds are going to bust through my
door just cause i visit the org and look at porn once
in a while.

besides, there are a gazillion records being kept. it's
not very likely your records will ever be looked at by
anyone. they're just processed by data-fetishists.

over at the pentagon internet cookie processing bureau

hey Hank come have look at this

what is it Bert?

it's IstenSzek's internet data

oh hotness Bert, let's see

wow, he orders from amazon

what did he get

two packets of tampons and a Prince cd

omg omg omfg Bert, i'm so gonna come

IstenSzek said:

I don't care what they know about me, where I go on the net

If I did care, I should'nt be on the www./net. Simple as that

they cant do anything LEGALLY with the info anyway

DexMSR said:

Now this is the kind of thing that pisses me off to no end.

There's a worldwide trend right now that we are forced to give up our privacy and civil liberties in exchange for "security". Wherever we go, whatever we do, we get observed and registered. One day we will do something that upsets one of the watchers, like support the "wrong" kind of politics or display a behavioral pattern that is completely harmless but that doesn't align with society's expectations. And then they will take action, have no doubt about it. Or else you are horribly naive.

For example, when I was in France a couple of summers ago I felt like going for a walk in the middle of the night. When I walked past a cemetary I felt like sitting down and looking at the sky and since there was a bench conveniently placed outside the cemetary on public ground I sat down on it. I'm telling you, within minutes a patrol car showed up and two cops stormed out, informed me that they'd seen me on a surveillance camera and demanded to know what I was doing there. I simply replied "nothing, why?", which led to a long discussion and viewing of my passport. I felt incredibly annoyed by the whole thing. It was none of their fucking business what I was doing there! I hadn't committed a crime, nor had I attempted to commit one. And that's just one benign example out of hundreds of thousands of actions of this type each day worldwide.

Remember persecutions of the McCarthy era, of the Nazi era, of the Mao era...that's the kind of extreme consequences that surveillance and registration can have. It's a reality, not a remote possibility, and you don't have to do something wrong to become the victim. All it takes is that you tick off the wrong people in the wrong context at the wrong time.

When it comes to Google, they don't even have an excuse to keep track of people's behaviour. They have become so huge that they feel above both law and morality. Who knows what the consequences will be? Who knows in what hands the information might fall?

I'm trying my best to avoid being registered and recorded and controlled. But our society is making it more and more difficult. It's really sad. And most definitely frightening.

where did you find this....Google?

Rhondab said:

I googled your name:

Google is the biggest spyware and so is Yahoo. And AOL and internet explorer. I think the day and age of people not knowing what you do is over.

I don't find Google to be bad at all. They are also holding out on giving information to the Govt right now. It's gonna be a big fight.

I also feel that there are worse companies out there like Walmart. Most big corp have their bad sides sure, but if they do more good for the public then I'm all for it. Google is not an evil company...I don't think so by a long shot.

I feel that they are techy geeks who figured out how to help the internet become something better. Yes I know you see ther ads and whatnot all over the place. But notice what they have done to advertising...they made it unobtrusive. And in terms of internet design...they are so simple...so clean.

I like Google!

IstenSzek said:

[Edited 1/24/06 9:59am]

abierman said:

the problem is...which one am I

Rhondab said:

I was hoping you're gonna tell us!

R'member back when getting cookies for free was a good thing?

I image-googled my name and Google brought up two pictures....

My album cover...



and an album cover from a Prince side project...



So clearly, Google knows something about me