Tag Archive | "security"
Google Does An About-Face On China Policy
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."
Continue reading...Google May Leave China In Wake Of Hacker Attacks
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The Internet firm says it will stop the scorned practice of censoring users' search results. Public interest groups lauded Google's move to stop censoring search results. "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.
Continue reading...Can Google Be Trusted? No: The Search Engine Must Do More To Protect Private Data
Sunday, November 29, 2009
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.
Continue reading...Political Parties, Candidates Cashing In On Pay-To-Play Issues Forums
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Top industry executives piled into Google's Silicon Valley headquarters over the weekend to hear California's Barbara Boxer, New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman and other Democratic senators discuss some of the most pressing policy issues on Capitol Hill. Consumer Watchdog urged the seven Democratic senators on the agenda for the weekend's Google event to boycott it, since it created the appearance of "pay-to-play politics when so many issues of concern to Google and the rest of the Silicon Valley technology community are on the table."
Continue reading...Google Dashboard Provides Too Much Info And Yet Not Enough
Saturday, November 7, 2009
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.
Continue reading...Poking At Google’s New Privacy Dashboard
Friday, November 6, 2009
... Dashboard doesn't really give users any clearer insights into what the company is doing with all of the data it collects. John Simpson, a consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog, said if Google really wants people to use Dashboard, the company should make it easier to find, noting that there are few links to the tool from the landing pages of any Google properties. Simpson said Google also should make it easier for users to blow away stored search and activity data across multiple Google properties with a single click. "Google is maximizing the PR value of this feature in response to critics who have demanded online privacy guarantees," Simpson said in a written statement. "They are letting a little light shine into the black box that is Google, but to claim that this is transparency is absurd."
Continue reading...Dashboard Shows What Google Knows About You
Thursday, November 5, 2009
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.
Continue reading...Google Offers Users A Peek At Stored Data
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Google, which has been criticized frequently for amassing large amounts of data about people, is giving users an easy way to find out what information it stores in their accounts. John Simpson, of Consumer Watchdog, a frequent critic of Google, said Dashboard gave users the appearance of control over privacy but did not really prevent Google from tracking users across the Web. “What the Dashboard does is list all the information linked directly to your name, but what it doesn’t do is let you know and control the data directly tied to your computer’s IP address, which is Google’s black box and data mine, Mr. Simpson said in a press release. “Google isn’t truly protecting privacy until it lets you control that information.”
Continue reading...Google Dashboard Is Small Step For User Control, Consumer Watchdog Says
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Group Calls for 'Make-Me-Anonymous' Button On Home Page SANTA MONICA, CA -- The new Google Dashboard touted by the Internet giant as offering users “transparency, choice and control” of user data stored by the company doesn’t give consumers adequate control over protecting their information from Google’s marketing machine, Consumer Watchdog said today. Consumer Watchdog applauded the company for giving consumers a single place to go to manage data, but said Google needed to give consumers the ability to stop being tracked by the company and to delete information associated with their computer’s IP address from the Google servers.
Continue reading...Microsoft vs. Google: When It Comes To The Cloud, It’s War
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
"All warfare is based on deception," goes the famous line attributed to Sun Tzu in the Art of War. It may very well be the operating principle that both Google and Microsoft have taken to heart in their battle for dominance of the office desktop and cloud. Case in point: The recent battle between the two companies to sell office productivity and email services to the city of Los Angeles. Last month, before the city made a decision, Google downplayed an attack on the security of its cloud-based offerings by Consumer Watchdog -- but quickly published a "fact check" document to distribute to city officials to support its claims about reliability and security. According to one report, Google suggested that Consumer Watchdog was "being paid to target Google specifically," without publicly naming the party allegedly paying the group.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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