paranoid ? or is Google tracking me - and you ?

I was thinking of starting a new thread about Facebook's privacy issues which are
going into a second review with Canadian privacy officials
I'm not a user of 'social sites/programs' so don't care too much about their data
mining however if government 'spying' would have prevented 9/11 and 7/7 - UK then
I'm all for it

 

bad news about how they're tracking you:

http://www.businessinsider.com/5-ways-to-track-what-your-website-visitors-are-doing-2010-10

 

I don't think sites stats are any big thing
what's a concern is what Google for one is doing particularly the accessing personal
info via wi-fi sweeps when it does the 'street view'
I don't believe Google has any ethics/morals when it comes to 'data mining' and
only steps back after it's found-out. Google doesn't care and I wonder why it hasn't
been hacked yet by someone wanting to see just what and how much data it has
on its servers collected from the hundreds of millions of people accessing the www,
probably they aren't thought of as a source of cc numbers, or are they ?

 

When I search for my own name and a few friends' names (these people have rather unusual names), I was shocked to find both information and misinformation on myself and my friends.

In 1994, I spent 3 months on a Staten Island commune. I didn't have any utilities in my name, and I did not have any phone or mail service to the address where I was staying. I was shocked to find that address was listed as one of my prior addresses. The only place I had given this address was the Staten Island public library. It was shocking that this address was published on the web.

 

Google is not your friend.

 

this one's about the Google collecting personal data via wifi or,
is your wifi secure ? and, 'we know where you are' and, 'the Google privacy pervert'
'Google on course for a pasting from MPs over privacy breaches'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/...6/google-street-view-information-commissioner
from Elbereth comment: 'Hack uses Google Street View data to stalk its victims'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/03/google_street_view_hack/
and:
'Gaffe-prone [Google] search kingpin' - "people who don't like pictures of their
homes appearing on Street View should "just move".
" . . . people should change their names to escape embarrassing records on the
web; that if you're concerned about the personal data Google may have on you,
then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing; and, finally, that those
same records mean Google "can more or less know what you're thinking about".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/26/schmidt_misspoke/
and:
"“America needs a ‘Do Not Track Me’ list and Google is Exhibit A in the case for it.”
Google's Schmidt satirised as privacy pervert"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/03/consumer_watchdog_google_schmidt/

 

Good thread and scary also.. We think we are more secure and better off than earlier years and new things come up daily, like security issues on credit/ATM cards, then privacy issues on chats like facebook, buzz...and now this... Maybe we have to forget we can have privacy any more. Hope we do have privacy in our homes at least...

 

I was developing a website a while back, and had never uploaded this site to the internet. It existed only on my hard-drive. It was for a security company.

I went into my g-mail while working on the site and noticed all the ads on the side were based off the keywords on the website I was developing, WHICH HAD NEVER BEEN UPLOADED TO THE WEB! "Tactical training," "Rykers island," "Inmate," - these weren't words I searched with any regularity. I forget some of the other terms, but they were esoteric and unique to my website. It's one thing for gmail to be looking through my web history to determine how to most effectively advertise for me; it's another for them to be looking at data files on my computer which have never been shared with the public and scan through them for ad keywords. Spooky stuff.

 

can't answer that directly NY0BScalper
I once asked my ISP Shaw Cable to find an email for me as I thought they stored
them but they don't, think they do in the UK or there's talk of them doing so
but Facebook's upcoming mail programs have to be I think a source for them to do
a Lot of data-mining, given the privacy issues they 'have a problem' complying with

 

gmail searches through your mailbox according to the user agreement you signed with google. you probably communicated about your site with other people via email. that's how gmail knows those keywords.