Archive | Tag: Gmail

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Google’s ties to the Obama administration are perhaps unrivaled in corporate America, but the Internet giant’s announcement this week that it’s considering pulling out of China because of Chinese censorship and hacker attacks put the White House in a tricky spot. "They like to go around and sing the mantra, ‘Don’t be evil,’" said
John Simpson, a consumer advocate with the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog.
"But they almost always act in what they perceive to be Google’s
interest – and that doesn’t necessarily coincide with that of any
government."

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A Silicon Valley Internet security firm on Thursday described for the first time how hackers from China were able to crack Google’s defenses, saying the attackers took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft’s Web browser to probe deeply into the company’s network. In addition to the Google network, the high-profile intrusion also
targeted Gmail accounts in the United States and other countries. This
may prompt users to demand better security for electronic mail and
other personal data that’s stored on Internet clouds, some advocates
say. "The problem up until now is that people like Google have
emphasized speed and efficiency and ease of use," said John M. Simpson,
an advocate with Consumer Watchdog. "In too many cases, they have let
security and privacy become a secondary issue. This situation is a
wake-up call for everybody."

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San Francisco, CA — In a surprise announcement late Tuesday, Google Inc. said it may turn its back on the huge Chinese market after a sophisticated cyber attack on the e-mail accounts of human rights advocates in the Asian nation. Some have dubbed the country’s censorship efforts, which apply to Yahoo
Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s search engines too, the "Great Firewall of
China." Users of Google.cn in China generally couldn’t look at images
of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, dig up information about Tibet’s
Dalai Lama or access the Web site for journalism watchdog organization
Reporters Without Borders, according to reports. "While Google
should never have agreed to censor search results in China in the first
place, it is doing the right thing by ending the practice now," said
John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog in Los Angeles. "The company should
be commended."

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Few doubt that Internet giant Google is succeeding in its audacious
corporate mission "to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful." The problem is that the mission
puts Google directly at odds with our privacy rights, and Google
appears unwilling to give consumers enough control.

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Dashboard lets you get rid of some information on there. Google says
part of the goal here is to stop the theory about what Google knows and
doesn’t know about you, to provide transparency. But there are some
privacy advocates who say this is still this is not enough. For
example, one group called Consumer Watchdog put out this statement
saying, "If Google really wanted to give users control of their
privacy, it would give consumers the ability to be anonymous from the
company and advertisers in crucial areas like search data and online
behavior." And you can see the statement right there.

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The Google Dashboard tool is also limited to information gathered on users when logged in to Google.  It
doesn’t give consumers access to information that might be tied to
individual consumers in other ways — such as searches associated with
individual computer IP address or cookies. That means it falls short of
being a true privacy tool, according to privacy rights advocacy group
Consumer Watchdog. "The
dashboard gives the appearance of control without the actual ability to
prevent Google from tracking you and delivering you to its marketers,”
said John M. Simpson, a spokesman for the nonprofit organization. "It
doesn’t reveal anything about what is at the heart of what I call
Google’s ‘black box’ — what is associated with your computer’s IP
address."

 

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Indeed, privacy advocates, such as John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, argued Google’s gesture with Dashboard was just a straw man and that if the company really wanted to help it would allow users to prevent search information from being logged or to prevent Google from tracking a user’s online activity while surfing the Web.

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The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog,
which has been critical of the amount of personal data Google stores,
called the dashboard a small step in the right direction. "If
Google really wanted to give users control over their privacy it would
give consumers the ability to be anonymous from the company and its
advertisers in crucial areas such as search data and online behavior,"
spokesman John M. Simpson said on the group’s Web site. "The Dashboard
give the appearance of control without the actual ability to prevent
Google from tracking you and delivering you to its marketers."

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Critics Say Google Makes Some Privacy Progress, But Call For More Transparency

Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit advocacy group formerly known as the
Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, said in a statement today
that it applauds Google for giving users a single place to go to manage
their data. But at the same tine, the group also came down hard on
Google, contending that it needs to give users a vehicle for stopping
the company from collecting any personal data. The company should also
provide a way for users to delete their information from Google’s
servers, the group added.

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