Remove Google Search History Before New Privacy Policy Takes Effect
eff.org
eff.org
I'm still not sure why people are afraid of Google's new privacy policy. I understand that there are people who have specific privacy needs, but outside that scope I doubt you have anything to worry about.
It's doubtful at best that Google's "log" of you would become compromised (unless your personal account were compromised, but then this would have been a problem anyways!). It also isn't the case that some Google employee is reading row after row of Google's customer DB snooping on individuals.
Google isn't some unified entity; your data is being manipulated by advertising algorithms to tailor ads for you. Unless you care about a CPU "knowing" your secrets, or you have specific privacy needs/concerns, none of this is a problem.
Maybe someone can surprise me with some good reasons to be concerned, but until then I am trusting Google.
the title is 88 char so something had to go.
The system (at present) does not seem intelligent enough to decipher between which of my friends should suggest what film I should go to vs. which should be giving me financial advice vs. which are just backing a product because they're a client.
Strictly regarding the web/search history thing, if I work on a campaign for Burger King and browse their site and related products a lot of the day, I don't really want "Burger King" to come up first on a search with local intent for "restaurants in New York", in that instance I'd prefer see the generic results.
For me it's not that I don't want Google to have the data or I have anything to hide, it's that I think the "search" experience it creates because of my very different needs in and out of work is poor (and likely to get worse with sharing this data across platform) and I don't want to spend my days having to keep a super close eye on which account I'm currently logged into before doing a search.
It's all personal preference and for some this will provide a great experience, and it may get better. For now though, I like the ability to say "no thank you, I like generic search".
Without saying so, google is building its own great wall of china, but worse, around each individual using google search. I'm using DuckDuckGo for now.
I understand that SEO are corrupting search result pertinence and google is trying to do something about it. But there is no guarantee that it's new strategy will make things better.
I don't want Google targeting ads at me while I'm at work, based on searches I did at home. I don't want to have to worry about the carefully targeted adverts displayed on random webpages I show people on my screen.
I don't want my hypothetical future child having to worry about accidentally disclosing via content targeting that they L, G, B or T before they want to.
Until it's obvious that Google are building tools that let me actually cope with these sorts of problems safely, and easily I'm happy to not have my thousands upon thousands of Google searches being centrally logged. Even if it was an occasionally useful feature.
Remember, people are not normal. The long tail is still long and there are a vast number of people out there with "specific privacy needs" that are "outside that scope" and definitely do have something to worry about.
Google's personalized search is just not as good as their unpersonalized search.
The time I was Googling for suitable Xmas presents for my Grandma should not influence my searches for valentines gifts.
Incidentally, am I the only one to mentally filter out search results that have the avatar of an online "friend" recommending them? Is that link was ranked highly just because someone I've never met tweeted it?
And here's my point: I simply cannot know or control what profit maximising ideas they may come up with in the future or what kinds of ideas politicians may deem necessary in order to win an election.
Some say that it will always be more profitable for Google to "respect my privacy". The problem is that the meaning of "respect my privacy" is a matter of fast changing attitudes. It's not my personal privacy they need to be concerned about, it's what the vast majority of their users will passively accept.
Their privacy policy says they can do anything with my data to create new services and improve existing ones. That means they can do anything. Full stop.
The reason why I'm more concerned about their new privacy policy than about the old one is that lots of small piles of information are less dangerous than one big pile of information, exactly for the reason they are creating it: The value of accumulated information is more than the sum of its parts.
The conclusions that can be drawn from that combined dataset are a lot more reliable and robust. Right now, much of the data that is out there about us is basically garbage and everyone knows it. No one can know if it means anything that I supposedly visited this or that site. But if they can also analyse what I searched for, what my emails are about, what blogs I read, which people I communicate with, etc, they can learn something about my intentions, not just about my actions and they can throw out the garbage.
I don't want all my intentions to be known or to be knowable to anyone on earth because I cannot know or control the intentions of those wanting to know my intentions. It's a onesided shift of power away from me and I can never take it back.
Once the data has become so much more reliable and the conclusions so much more robust, the desire to use that information for all kinds of new purposes will grow accordingly. The pressure on Google to use that knowledge to increase profit will grow. The incentive for criminals to steal the data will grow. The pressure on governments to proactively spy on everyone to prevent this or that type of crime will grow.
This is not me saying "Google has turned evil". It's just a recognition of an inevitable social and economic dynamic ensuing from the possibilities that well intregrated, high quality, sets of personal data provide.
I know more than the vast majority of people about data analysis and hence I will not delegate what "respecting my privacy" means to that majority of passive Google (or Faceboook, ...) users.
That's a myth. I belived it was true until someone here on HN linked to a Harvard Business Review article debunking it. Unfortunately I can't find the article, but here's a blog post discussing the issue: http://truthonthemarket.com/2010/07/27/the-shareholder-wealt...
I doubt that it would be legal to do so, but I'm not a lawyer, so suffice it to say that it's not practical because they would be removed from their management positions very quickly.
It just irks me that people often use the myth that they must maximise shareholder profits at all cost as a reason for why companies act evil. The Harvard Business Review article, that a still can't find unfortunately, also talked about how this myth is pervasive in management circles, and leads to bad business practices and corporations being socially unresponsible. I got the impression that you were insinuating this.
Google actually explicitly put something like that in their IPO report ("focus on the user and all else will follow" as facebook helpfully brought up recently).
Now, Mark Zuckerberg also put similar statements in his letter to investors, and you could certainly make the case that these statements don't guarantee that the user will be put first, but investors have still been alerted that decisions they don't like may be made if they're deemed important for long term growth (google's voting shares scheme also helps in the regard).
For companies in general, though, the reality is that the judge will almost immediately throw these cases out unless there has been a major stumble (see, for instance, all the thrown out stupidity around demands for a documented and public Steve Jobs-succession plan). Even then you pretty much have to prove that the actions made were negligent without any kind of foreknowledge of how the market is going to behave. In other words, the only people that end up making money on these suits are the ones in cases where the company settles to avoid court time.
Generally, if you're not in the US (and I'm assuming that's what you mean, not that you're disenfranchised but live in the US), then Google and other US companies have an obligation to comply with the laws of your country, assuming their terms of service allow use in your nation.
Ultimately, you have a choice to use or not use a service. The Company offering it has an obligation to disclose what information is collected and how it's used, and you also have to make an assessment of their ability to protect that data from misuse either internally or by external parties. We make these decisions all the time both online and offline.
I think it's fine for folks to opt out of using a service like Google if they no longer agree with the privacy policy. I don't think it's appropriate to villanize any company for good-faith efforts to update their privacy disclosure over time as long as you can opt out of those changes and erase your data. And I think we have to be realistic and expect that for 95% of users, they're not going to opt out.
I also think that it would be appropriate for you to disclose that you work for Google if you contribute to a discussion like this one taking the side of your employer.
The submitter just removed the "How to" crud from the title! :)
If that encroaches too much on your ability to neutrally assess a topic title, well, this ain't gonna be your century.
> It's doubtful at best that Google's "log" of you would become compromised (unless your personal account were compromised, but then this would have been a problem anyways!). It also isn't the case that some Google employee is reading row after row of Google's customer DB snooping on individuals.
Both of these cases have happened in the past.
Personal accounts have been compromised. That this sucks for other reasons doesn't make it less of a problem--labelling your house keys with your home address is still a stupid idea, regardless of whether losing your house keys "would have been a problem anyways!".
Google employees have been snooping on individuals (minors, even) in Google's customer DB. They were fired on the spot, but afaik no legal charges were pressed.
So basically you just told yourself a pretty lie, writing what you want to believe, not the way things actually are. How can you speak of neutral writing?
And then there's of course the government requests:
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/
See, on one hand I can see your point. IF all my data would forever remain under the sole control of Google AND will only ever be used in the ways they tell us it is used now THEN yes I concede there is little practical concerns to be worried about.
But if you believe those two requirements are met today and will remain so as long as Google possesses relevant data about yourself, you are deluding yourself.
The data is already being given to the US government and maybe others too.
Data leaks are not going to get less, and exploits will not stop to be found, and at some point it'll be Google's turn.
Finally there's the possibility that Google will have a change of "mind" and either turn evil, sell their data, starts doing less conscionable types of data mining, or maybe simply becomes utterly lax in protecting your data. It's a risk.
Combine all those risks and it'd be pretty naive to just ignore the facts and hope for the best.
With all due respect, this attitude really disturbs me. It's becoming very common these days: the implication that only deviants, criminals, off-the-grid wackos, and the anti-social have any real need for privacy.
No. I reject that premise. We all have a right to privacy, and we shouldn't have to give our reasons. (That's why it's privacy, after all!). We're quickly turning into a society whose members need to opt into privacy, and in which doing so is somehow stigmatized as abnormal.
I'm not suggesting that you are championing such a viewpoint, or that you even mean to suggest it. But that line of yours -- the idea that only a subset of us have privacy "needs" or "concerns" -- is troubling, and it reflects the rapidly encroaching, popular attitude of which I'm speaking.
[FWIW, I agree with you that Google's data-gathering isn't exactly a cause for immediate alarm. It's hardly taking us on some ominous path toward 1984. But I'm more concerned about the slow, steady erosion of privacy in the digital space, of which Google's activities are only one small part.]
I mean, the mentality I'm seeing on HN and Reddit and other sites nowadays is "How DARE $company tie my activities using their service to the IP address I accessed it from!"
It always seemed like common sense to me that any data I give a company (whether implicitly or explicitly) would be combined and reused and remixed in almost any way possible.
Google is welcome to my web activity, as far as I'm concerned, that's my payment for some really awesome web services that don't really have an equal anywhere else, especially wrt. integration.
But then again, I'm not a political dissident and I don't really have anything to hide during an average day on the internet. (And if/when I do have something to hide, I take steps to anonymize myself)
There most certainly is something as a need for a certain degree of privacy, but please do not confuse "need" for "justification". A soccer mom's average activities might not need privacy, but any justification she has is none of anyone's damn business but hers. If she wants to keep everything she does private, fine.
Someone who has a need for privacy would be the usual, political dissidents, unpopular opinions, etc.
The Abstruse Goose comic is much more applicable to pervasive government surveillance. To the extent that I fear that the government would get its hand on Google's cache of data about me, I blame the government, not Google. I think if people spent as much time focusing their attention elected officials as they spend on hand-wringing about Google, we'd probably have better laws.
(edited for grammar)
> Google is not 2 people watching me sleep, shower, drive, date, make love, etc.
its irrelevant how many people is watching you, but Google will watch you as much as technology and law (sometimes bent to maximum) lets them. Like you stated you value responses, but it doesnt get the rocket science to know humans are unique enough that one search to one person is irrelevant to another. Hence, search needs to be customized. If they could turn your security camera on, they would watch you sleeping. You can learn plenty from the act alone: having problems sleeping, snoring, moving your legs (whatever the symptom is called), waking up too early/too late -- al this information is gold to Google. Your driving behavior is important to insurance companies. Your dating life is important to dating websites - if you are single you are worth money to them. Otherwise they dont care. Making love is important too -- can you handle the ride, are you an impotent, do you like wearing kinky clothes, etc etc. This is all GOLD to google. Now, they may not throw at you Viagra pills when you search for steakhouse in New York but if they AdNetwork goes to other website they may, in their discretionary, use information gathered about you to serve better ads and get better click-through.
> It is software that stores and analyzes data that I choose to send to it. but you not always aware you sending, sometimes knowing what you "sending", you wouldnt!
> The Abstruse Goose comic is much more applicable to pervasive government surveillance. whats the difference if Google has to abide by the laws of the country they do business? They can sometime deny response to govnt subpoena your searches, but I say more and more they just comply. I dont think number of gov inquiries will go down. I dont think % of denials by Google will go up.
> I think if people spent as much time focusing their attention elected officials as they spend on hand-wringing about Google, we'd probably have better laws. how is this relevant to the subject or your comment at all?
Google retains a complete history of your interactions with them, which is not subject to this Web History setting, not deletable, not removable, and will be shared across its properties.
Short reply: This doesn't remove Google's search history of your searches at all.
Can you prove that?
If so, this could be a very hot potato.
If google states "Your web history is currently empty" and "web history is paused" but they continue to track your searches in a way that is tied to your identity then I think they're in breach of several laws.
They could chose to withold the ability to disable tracking. But by giving you the impression that they're not tracking you I think they're definitely across the line if they continue to track you in spite of that.
> Google retains a complete history of your interactions with them, which is not subject to this Web History setting, not deletable, not removable, and will be shared across its properties.
Is a pretty heavy accusation to make without hard proof. And if it turns out to be true I'd hate to be the one to have to explain to the EU regulatory body how "your search history is empty" can co-exist with "we have a complete history of your activity". If it is a history on my activity then my search history can not be empty and if it is empty then google should no longer have it either.
"You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users."
This refers you to the main privacy policy, which says very clearly that Google stores every request you make along with cookies that uniquely identify your account.
http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
Web History is an add-on tracking system. Google does not permit opting-out of Google's regular tracking system, which at one point stored every request you had ever made to any Google server, but which I think now may be semi-anonymized after a couple of years, if I remember their changing policies correctly. Although, the Privacy Policy makes no such promise, so perhaps they do still keep every request ever made in Google's existence. Google absolutely has a perfect record of every interaction you've had with them for the past year or two. Even if Web History is "off".
It is of course possible that I'm alone in this but somehow I doubt that.
I would not be surprised if many people got the same impression.
The fact that it is only available to logged in users and that - as far as I can see - it is not public facing, but just to you specifically further increased that expectation.
Could the difference be that Google associates data with your Google account if you have Web History turned on, but only uses IP addresses in their "logs system"?
If this was the case, IMHO, it would be consistent enough with expectations.
> [UPDATE 2/22/2012]: Note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement.
> With Web History enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented. If you want to do more to reduce the records Google keeps, the advice in EFF's Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy white paper remains relevant.
I found this link in google's privacy FAQ, but there may be a better one out there:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/preview/faq/#...
http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/preview/faq/#...
Of course, they unhelpfully don't enumerate all the uses of that log data, but it seems pretty clear that it isn't for personalization and (as far as I can tell) it isn't even changed at all by the new privacy policy anyway.
edit: it also appears that they log by a cookie ID that isn't tied to the account. You could probably still reconstruct account information for many users (and even after anonymization a lot is revealable (see the AOL search logs debacle)), but, again, this is quite different than logging data associated with an account and using it to target advertising.
> We strike a reasonable balance between the competing pressures we face, such as the privacy of our users, the security of our systems and the need for innovation. We believe anonymizing IP addresses after 9 months and cookies in our search engine logs after 18 months strikes the right balance.
What you say: "I did this cookie thing. I never searched for any sort of kiddie porn on the internet."
What the jury of your peers hears: "Child molester trying to pretend he didn't do it."
What the judge does: Extra time in prison because you aren't taking responsibility for your crimes.
Enjoy your prison sentence.
Don't like the machine? Pile more shit on it!
[1] http://www.optimizegoogle.com/ [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/optimizegoogl...
That said, even as a non-statistician, it wasn't hard to imagine the amount of information Google could infer by focusing on an individual. I had a data set exceeding 50k searches with the resulting click-throughs on my account. (Plus, they can of course leverage their massive db to help eliminate anomalies like Whitney Houston)
In addition to the basics like big item purchase history, hobbies, and problems (e.g. sickness); I wouldn't be surprised if Google could predict my relationship status and sexual preferences.
Custom search results are great, but I'm extremely happy to have been given the option to delete that profile. If anything, it is the single largest factor pushing back to Firefox and possibly DuckDuckGo.
"Some of us are completely aware of what Google does"
And most are not. And that was my point. At no point did I state that 100% of people are unaware of what Google does, so I don't know why you felt the need to add that tidbit.
"Seeing some personalized ads in exchange for access to all the world's information seems like a fair trade-off to me."
Not really relevant to anything I said. (EDIT:) However, if "seeing some personalized ads," is the only cost you can imagine, then I'm afraid that Google is benefiting from your ignorance too. Here are two more costs:
1.) If your account is compromised, your search history is compromised and could be used against you
2.) If you get in legal trouble, your search history could be used against you
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged"
Also, running analysis on this kind of data must be pure awesomeness, from scientist's point of view ;).
http://lifehacker.com/5697167/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-you...
I have close to 45k searches over 7 years, would love to keep that data and mine it myself.
Increasing the num=100000 argument doesn't seem to impact this limit.
One would think that your search history should be a core part of their data liberation effort.
https://www.google.com/history/lookup?month=11&day=30...
It shouldn't be too hard to write a script to scrape you're whole history...
export.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- mechanize (LoadError) from export.rb:1
edit: nvm, installed libwww-mechanize-ruby and it's working fine.
The redirected Google home page clearly shows me as logged in. Am I doing it wrong?
I didn't specify HTTPS, but I use the HTTPS-Everywhere Firefox extension so the result should be the same. Even so, maybe there is some slight difference which altered the behaviour for me.
Going to the non-SSL page http://google.com/history (as suggested by someone here) doesn't result in the redirect, but gives the message "Web History is not available for mydomain.com."
As usual, it seems that Google Apps users are in a different (lower) class when it comes to Google functionality.
I hate that Google Apps accounts are second-class citizens. Especially knowing that you can pay for corporate accounts... seems backwards.
As it stands now, I do sometimes refer back to it, but I don't think it's worth having it if it means giving up the information to advertisers as well.
"You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users."
So.... why would I delete this information if Google still keeps it elsewhere? Do I just have no ability to control what data Google collects on me, even if I agree to stop using its services?
1) If someone breaks into your account, that person can steal all your search history. This is why I disabled search history recording a long time ago.
2) It was uncovered that Google passess some of its data about users to third parties, especially ads agencies. Now, with the new policy, you can't be sure that search data leakage will not occur. Moreover, ads agencies use mechanisms like cookie syncing to share user data between themselves.
Sometimes I get the feeling in all the discussions around google's new privacy policy that I'm one of the few people around here that bothered to actually read it :)
You can manage them here: www.google.com/ads/preferences/
Note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement.
With Web History enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented.
https://encrypted.google.com/?pws=0
And I have search history turned off.
I figure that keeping Google and Facebook in their own little prison should help greatly with privacy.
I use DDG for searching whenever possible.
Not so much to hide things (as a pastor I got used to being watched 24x7 years ago), but just to preserve what little privacy I have left.
What I want is a browser where I can be logged into Google, and any link I click will open that link in my "private" (not logged into Google) browser. Same with Facebook, Twitter, etc.
So I've started developing XUL apps to run each in their own sandbox.
Your XUL apps approach sounds interesting. Can you offer any pointers on what you do and how others could do it too?
Basically you open the XUL app for the service you want to access. It acts as a chromeless firefox browser and intercepts any links you click. If it's an external link it opens it in your default browser where you wouldn't be logged into google preserving a bit of anonymity.
I also found this link http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-xulintro/ after a little searching. I'll try it out.
Is Google collecting this data and not giving me the option to turn it off, or are they not collecting the data?
Additionally, YouTube has become pretty much just a branch of the RIAA and MPAA and their local equivalents, and I'd rather burn down my house than allow them access to my data.
That's why I've been blocking YouTube from setting cookies on my computer, and that's why other people should do too.
http://www.youtube.com/my_search_history
I am not saying that the average user knows about them, though, but they're not that hard to find.
(Also, since you seem to talk about YouTube and Google as separate companies: They're not. Google owns YouTube and their new policy applies there as well.)
Who is actually going to do this? Who isn't?
However, it's also not something I'm hugely concerned about; as others have said the main danger is from some unscrupulous individual gaining access to your account. In terms of Google having access to my data, I would imagine my data will never be seen by human eyes. Having said that, one does need to remember the inherent permanence of data on the internet, as Facebook's timeline has shown sometimes your data can surface in unexpected ways.
Google is one of few companies that I trust. So while most people are freaking out about losing some sense of privacy I personally think that it can open some very exciting opportunities and new features. I want to see where this is going and how Google will be able to use my information that he has to provide something valuable to me. I'm happily keeping all my google data and search history. And I'm also ok with Google selling my anonymized profile with third parties.
After my password was stollen on PSN PWNAGE and my own Mom broke into my MSN account to delete my contacts on a Rage spree I don't trust many people anymore. So don't think I don't think my info and privacy are not worth my caution.
But after reading Google ToS carefully I agree with everything they want to do and I'm ok with it. Most people certainly never read Google's new ToS. a lot of information on the news in the last months and even here in Hacker News are FUD and misconceptions. Google will not own you, they just want to use your data to provide more value to you and it's advertisers. You are not exposed.
So top freaking out a little bit. Read the ToS and think about it.
If trust becomes an issue with Google, I won't just clear my search history, I'll leave for good.
If I don't need that data, they sure as hell don't need it.
Aside from this, I have avoided this Google feature.
Until then, please stop whining about privacy, because frankly, I just don't see how any of this really matters. My life has yet to be negatively impacted by Google and I don't foresee it happening in the near future.
It's fine that you don't see how this matters but it does matter to some and having the choice and understanding how to exercise that choice is essential.
No need to apologise, wasn't trying to call you out or anything, just felt like this was one of the few posts I've read that doesn't whine too much about it.
You, sir, have a shit imagination
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...
Thus, when did we become a less free 'Third World Country'?
My apologies to citizens in Third World countries as I lack the vocab early this morning to express it in a different way.
with my de facto account, it shows the calendar. and there's no way i can find a way to that "no thanks" button