by Asgeir Hoem in Issue 3: Interference (20 March 2009)
In 1998, Google’s search engine—then still in beta—answered 10,000 queries daily. Today, less than ten years later, that is their number of employees. Google’s services, which include the worlds biggest search engine, a blog platform, an RSS feed reader, an e-mail service, an entire web-based office suite and numerous other applications, are being used by millions every day. “The innocuous and ubiquitous web search box presents a significant and increasing risk to individuals and organizations” (2, p. 1), and every time these services are used, more information is gathered, organised and stored. We provide Google with a “progressively clearer picture of our personal and professional lives, the lives of our associates and the health, stratagems and structure of our private and public organizations” (2, p.1). The costs of high capacity storage has decreased drastically, which makes it possible for service providers such as Google to store huge amounts of data for a long period of time. Does Google represent a very real privacy threat?
(This essay was written in October 2007, and may contain details that are no longer correct.)
Google is in a position where it can construct extremely detailed profiles of its users. Most of Google’s services use cookies to store data about users, track their behavior and keep settings between sessions. These cookies will not expire until 2038; they are read and registered every time you visit a Google page, thus adding to your profile continuously. This has been called fingerprinting (15). So far, Google “does not cross-reference the cookies [between services], [but] nothing is stopping them from doing so at any time” (7). By combining the information these cookies contain, there are few limits to how detailed the profiles can be. E-mail conversations and contact lists quickly map out a social and professional network; search term history reveals personal interests; feed reader subscriptions show more interests; Google Video and YouTube view history discovers sense of humor, music taste and preferred entertainment; Google Products shows financial status; Google News reveals what kind of current events the user is interested in; Google Calendar shows how busy he is; and that is not half of their services. Chief executive Eric Schmidt said that the final goal is for the users to be able to google “What job shall I take?” (10), and be served with an answer based on years and years of collected information.
The information that is collected about you exists virtually forever, and can easily be found by future associates, spouses or employers—as well as governmental institutes. “If you are in your 20s and when 40 you decide to run for presidency, guess who has a detailed profile about ready sitting there?”(12) Google stores a cached version of the documents its robots crawl through, which means that material can be deleted from the original web server, and still be found through their search engine.
Non-Gmail users might unknowingly provide information to Google. Gmail is—apart from the web search—one of Google’s major products. When signing up for the service, the user agrees to have all e-mail automatically scanned by Google. The reason is to give them the opportunity to add contextually relevant advertising in the sidebar, which finances the service and makes it free for the user. Over 30 privacy organisations urged Google in 2004 to suspend Gmail until the privacy issues had been sorted out, arguing that “[the] scanning of confidential email violates the implicit trust of an email service provider” (5). The major problem with this policy is that non-Gmail users that correspond with Gmail users have their e-mails scanned without ever agreeing to Google’s privacy policy and Gmails terms of use. The Electronic Privacy Information Center states that “Gmail violates the privacy rights of non-subscribers” (6). Google’s policy does not state that keywords and terms extracted from e-mail conversations with non-subscribers are deleted (13). If keyword combinations and e-mail addresses are stored in databases, it opens up lots of possibilities that different institutions would be interested in. A simple database search could pull out messages with “words such as ‘box cutters’ in the same email as ‘airline schedules’”.
Furthermore, in Gmail, when you select a message and click the delete button, the message is not deleted. “Google admits that deleted messages will remain on their system, and may be accessible internally at Google, for an indefinite period of time.” This means that information that you get rid of by deleting it from your e-mail inbox continues to exist on Google’s servers. This includes any attachments. If you receive or send sensitive information through your Gmail account, there is in effect no way to delete it permanently. Also, if an unknowing non-Gmail user sends a picture to a Gmail account, that picture can last for years without either of them knowing, and without the sender’s consent.
“And don’t assume for a minute [Google] can keep a secret.” In September 2006, the Brazilian government was investigating “alleged racist, homophobic, and pornographic content”. In that case, Google handed over records of users of Orkut, their social networking service (16). Google’s privacy policy states that any information can be shared if it is “necessary to (a) satisfy any (…) enforceable governmental request”, which means that users consent to having their web search history, their personal information and their e-mails disclosed to any government. The Electronic Privacy Information Center encourages people to avoid sending e-mails to Gmail addresses, and to avoid using Gmail altogether (14).
The next step, and the thing that might scare the most people, is if—or when—Google will be able to track their users in the real world. They are heading into the free wi-fi market, “which will require it to know your whereabouts (i.e., which router you are closest to)” (17). The recently released iPhone has got Google Maps built in as a native application, which tells Google exactly where you are when you search for directions or look up stores.
How this development is going to evolve is limited to speculations. It is very easy to consider Google as an unchallenged, dominating power who answers to nobody, and with nowhere to go but up.
1 http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html
2 http://www.rumint.org/gregconti/publications/20061101_NSPW_Googling_Conti_Final.pdf
3 http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-01-27-n30.html
4 http://blogoscoped.com/censored/
5 http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm
6 http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html#13
7 http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html#13
8 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=agImLlGaNKaw&refer=home
9 http://www.google.com/privacy.html
10 http://www.webhostingreport.net/blog/archives/2007/05/23/the-hidden-danger-of-igoogle/
11 http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
12 http://www.webhostingreport.net/blog/archives/2007/05/23/the-hidden-danger-of-igoogle/
13 http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html
14 http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html#42
15 http://www.rumint.org/gregconti/publications/20061101_NSPW_Googling_Conti_Final.pdf
16 http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/google.html
17 http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/google.html
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