Controversy over Google's Privacy Policy Changes

Google Privacy and the Witching HourNew Privacy Policy Effective Date (Mar 1, 2012) Nears

Before – 80 Separate Policies

Before +1 Button, Advertising, Advisor,

Apps, Blogger, Books, Buzz, Chrome, Chrome Frame, Gears, Google+, Google Music, Google Notebook, Google TV, Google Web Toolkit, Groups, Health Knol Location Service in Firefox, Mobile, Moderator, Orkut, Picasa, Postini, Safe Browsing, Sites, Store, Toolbar, Trader, Translator Toolkit, Voice, Wallet, Web Accelerator, Web History, YouTube

After Google

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38 State Attorney Generals Object to Changes On a fundamental level, the policy appears to invade consumer

privacy by automatically sharing personal information consumers input into one Google product with all Google products.

It rings hollow to call their ability to exit the Google products ecosystem a “choice” in an Internet economy where the clear majority of all Internet users use – and frequently rely on – at least one Google product on a regular basis.

Even more troubling, this invasion of privacy is virtually impossible to escape for the nation’s Android-powered smartphone users, who comprise nearly 50% of the national smartphone market.3 For these consumers, avoiding Google’s privacy policy change may mean buying an entirely new phone at great personal expense. No doubt many of these consumers bought an Android-powered phone in

reliance on Google’s existing privacy policy, which touted to these consumers that “We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent.”

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State AGs’ Letter Con’tYour company claims that users of Google products

will want their personal information shared in this way because doing so will enable your company to provide them with a “simple product experience that does what you need, when you want it to,” among many other asserted benefits. If that were truly the case, consumers would not only decline to opt out of the new privacy policy, but would freely opt in if given the opportunity. Indeed, an “opt-in” option would better serve current users of Google products by enabling them to avoid subjecting themselves to the dramatically different privacy policy without their affirmative consent.

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EU ObjectionsThe CNIL and the EU data protection authorities are

deeply concerned about the combination of data across services and have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing. They intend to address these questions in detail with Google’s representatives.

Welcomes effort to streamline policies, but “should not be conducted at the expense of transparency and comprehensiveness for users.” Recommends multi-layered approach for each service.

Reiterate EU’s call for a pause.

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Public Response47 Percent Unaware of Change

Only 12 Percent Reviewed Policy

From Big Brother Watch

http://tgr.ph/xTfUV1

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Users Can Still Opt-Out (sort of) Users who do not consent to the Privacy Policy changes can quit

their services and extract their data entirely – or alternatively the user can refrain from using Google services requiring a log-in after March 1st.

Google’s public policy blog post explains:

You still have choice and control. You don’t need to log in to use many of our services, including Search, Maps and YouTube. If you are logged in, you can still edit or turn off your Search history, switch Gmail chat to “off the record,” control the way Google tailors ads to your interests, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer. . . . 

You can use as much or as little of Google as you want. For example, you can have a Google Account and choose to use Gmail, but not use Google+. Or you could keep your data separate with different accounts — for example, one for YouTube and another for Gmail.

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PC World Checklist Check Google Dashboard for info already stored

Clear Your Google Web History

Tweak Your Ads Preferences

Liberate Your Data

The Nuclear Option: Delete Your Google Account

http://www.pcworld.com/article/250950/google_privacy_checklist_what_to_do_before_googles_privacy_policy_changes_on_march_1.html

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