Searching the web seems innocent enough right? Well it might suprise you to know that the major search engines most likley know who you are, what your political beliefs are, what your religious beliefs are, your interests and hobbies and even your sexual preferance!
How do they know all this? It’s simple, data retention. Every time you search using a search engine, more than likley it is being recorded and stored. Google would have to be the worst offender of this massive invasion of privacy, and it has recently got the search giant into trouble with the EU (European Union). The EU claims that this mass storage of private information is against the EU’s data retention and privacy laws, and Google has ammended it privacy policy to try and stop the outcry. Google used to hold onto your information indefinately, now they will only hold onto it for 12 to 18 months (which has not stopped the EU moving forward). The EU states that any storage of personally identifiable information is against the privacy act.
So what do they use this stored information for? Well no-one really knows, and that’s part of the problem. If this information falls into the wrong hands, who know’s what they could do with it. I reflect back to WW2, and what happened when a certain political party had access to certain information. Now day’s the information would be even more orgainsed and handed to them on a silver platter.
Well, really their could be all sorts of legitmate reasons for the information storage, to better software and user experiance for example. But should that come at the cost of your privacy?
Another rumour that has been spread throughout the net is that Google is "in bed with the CIA". This arouse out of the fact Matt Cutts (one of Google’s head men) was once employed by the NSA (National Security Agency), and was once given high security clearance. So is the US government hand in hand with G
Related posts:
