Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

http://www.afr.com/technology/social-media/google/facebook-is-in-the-privacy-spotlight-but-should-google-be-next-20180412-h0ynog

by randomerr • 8 years ago

171 63 8 years ago

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pepecantina• 8 years ago

Yes.

sharemywin• 8 years ago

And the I's have it.

jacquesm9• 8 years ago

'Ayes'.

alecco• 8 years ago

Google is more dangerous than Facebook. In the later you usually have a persona you pretend to be. But Google knows you better than yourself. You can’t lie to Google. Is your teenage daughter pregnant? Do you have a disease that is socially rejected? Do you want to have an abortion? Are those pimples in your groin an STD? Are you secretly looking for another job? Google probably knows that before you do. And their business plan is making money out of that information.

And let’s never forget Eric Schmidt:

http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-pri...

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place;"

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo 12-7-09.

The "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it;"

Said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.

"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are;"

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the 2010 Techonomy conference.

"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about;"

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.

"It's a future where you don't forget anything…"In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time;"

Explained Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at TechCrunch, 9-28-10.

"No harm, no foul;" Concerning Google's unauthorized collection of WiFi signals from tens of millions of homes in 33 countries over three years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the Times of London in May 2010.

chinathrow• 8 years ago

Sometimes I wonder what Schmidt is _really_ thinking when he's handing out these statements. "Dumb fucks" [1] as well?

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg

dvfjsdhgfv• 8 years ago

If we really want to deal with Google's enormous power, we'll need to tackle the issue at both ends: political and technical. As for politics, it doesn't look like Google is going to be attacked the way it happened to FB - the CA affair was almost an accident. And Google knows better and will do everything to avoid accidents.

The second issue is technological. The competing search engines are not there yet, although they're continuously improving. Google got where they are not only by text search, but also extending the search categories horizontally. The competing search engine would need some smart minds to come up with something extra, something genuinely useful that would make people flock there.

Then there are all other parts of Google ecosystem that people depend on: Gmail, Adwords, Adsense, GA. And millions of Android devices. How to eradicate all that from our lives? It will take decades to complete - if we started now, that is.

bluGill• 8 years ago

Using other search engines goes a long way to get them there - the more they are used the more advertising dollars they get (and the less google gets), which leads to dollars to invest.

I find that duckduckgo is good enough for everything these days.

millstone• 8 years ago

Addendum to your creepy quote list:

"I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." from 8/10/10 WSJ interview.

open-source-ux2• 8 years ago

Google tracks online behaviour on an industrial scale. It's baffling how little scrutiny the company faces, least of all from the tech community who often rush to it's defence. (Does a multi-billion dollar company need your defence?)

When you create a Google account, you're asked to provide your name, your gender, your date of birth, your location and your mobile phone number. Some of your most personal and private details, all of which will now be tied to your online behaviour.

That ceaseless data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do. It's quite horrible that this is happening - the kids don't even get a say, it's the adults who've decided this.

It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form and detached from user accounts, we don't know how that information could be mined or analysed either now or in the future. (In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the ginormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture).

And we've seen from Spotify and Netflix how even aggregated data can reveal very private and personal user behaviour.

Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy. Just because Google hasn't ever suffered a breach of user data, people say that Google can be trusted. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.

teddyfrozevelt• 8 years ago

G Suite for Education very clearly doesn't track students using it.

https://edu.google.com/k-12-solutions/privacy-security/

open-source-ux2• 8 years ago

Where does it say that it doesn't track students on that page?

The G Suite for Education Privacy Notice [1] clearly states that Google collects device information, unique device identifiers, mobile network information (including phone number of the user). Also logged are IP addresses, location information, and app usage using unique application numbers.

Even if this information is detached from individual accounts and aggregated, it equals a phenomenal amount of data captured by Google on millions of students in the US.

[1] https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html

hlecuanda2• 8 years ago

Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy.
You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.

Non sequitur conclusion from a faulty premise. If you're a Google user, then it's in your best interest that their security is up to par and they don't disappoint. I get enterprise class 2FA security to protect my data on my end and clear controls, opt-outs and buttons everywhere to delete all of my data from any particular service, plus I get to download such data in a useful, documented format for my own consumption, not some crippled html report I need to mine after the fact.

If you are NOT a Google user, though, not tracking you is not their duty, but a security breach on YOUR part, especially on the part of those who kbow better.

Its like a person walking naked in a public square, expecting that it was the city's duty to protect their privacy.

If you are Not a Google user and do not wish to be tracked by Google or Facebook or anyone for that matter, you need to assume responsibility for the security of your data and metadata by becoming as inconspicuous on the network as you can.

Again, it's nobody's duty but yours and failure to do so is a breach of your own security leading to leakage of your privacy.

matlin5• 8 years ago

The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms. Having centralized information for a user is important to many (you can always spread it across multiple emails and accounts) but I think violation of privacy is the main reason Facebook is under investigation not centralization of data.

ocdtrekkie2• 8 years ago

Google is its own third party: There is no appreciable difference between Facebook sharing your data with an ad company and Google sharing your data with their own built-in ad company.

matlin5• 8 years ago

There definitely is... That's the whole point of Facebook's Senate hearing. If it stays within company and can't be used by directly by third parties for their own agendas like influencing elections. I 100% think that we should be weary of over centralized information but we are talking about two very different scenarios: even a small social network with relatively little information can be very dangerous if it leaks personal data.

notacoward4• 8 years ago

The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms.

Are you absolutely sure about that? Are you absolutely sure it will remain that way tomorrow, or next month?

jacquesm9• 8 years ago

He may be sure but he's wrong either way. The Google real-time bidding spec outlines pretty clearly what data Google will share with third parties.

jacquesm9• 8 years ago

The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms.

Google absolutely shares that information with other firms:

https://developers.google.com/ad-exchange/rtb/start

dschuetz2• 8 years ago

Fun fact: Google collects much more data from Android devices than from iOS devices. This might be unsurprising, and even obvious, but I was surprised how precise and intrusive that data is.

The whole time I was using an Android phone with my google account logged in on the device, google recorded and retained basically everything. My location, without even me using the maps app. My old contacts which I deleted from my contacts lists were still in the records. Any IPv4 or IPv6 address my phone was assigned to. This was even more creepy than facebook's data trove. I deleted my data on facebook as far as I could and also the account (not just deactivated) and I deleted most of the data google had on me. The problem is that I only can assume that all the data is now gone, but how can I be sure?

Google might constantly assure that they handle everything with care, but the extent of their intrusion into my private life is really scary.

mtgx2• 8 years ago

It also annoys the hell out of me how often companies get away with something if they just say "Whoops, it was a mistake/bug."

Google was recently found to track Android users' location even when they didn't have their GPS on. And they said it was a "bug". Like I'm just going to believe that from a company whose main objective is to track as much about us as possible.

But my point is the FTC should have slapped them with a major (at least tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending how long they've been doing it and to how many people) even if this was a bug.

If you tracked or collected data without users' consent, you get fined - bigly. No ifs or buts about it. Enough with the BS excuses and apology tours while they pocket billions from the "error" or "mistake."

jacquesm9• 8 years ago

As long as money and politics are strongly intertwined it is unlikely this will happen within the country of origin of the company. Lobbyists are just too powerful.

And that's before we get into the kind of tricks and entity like Google or Facebook could pull if they decided to become an active participant rather than just a channel for advertising. If that hasn't already happened.

kop316• 8 years ago

Can you link the article about Google tracking you even when location wasn't on?

I am curious because I more or less came to that same hypothesis, but had no hard evidence. I noted before that when I turned on and off location services, the GPS lock was near instantaneous (i.e. when I turned on location, Google Maps located me with GPS precision immediately. There could be other ways of how this happens, it was noted in another post of mine, but that had still had me a bit suspicious. I replaced Google Play Services with microG recently (https://lineage.microg.org/). I then saw that it was MicroG, NOT the OS, that had control over my location, and MicroG still tracks my location when Location is off(https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...).

While none of this conclusively points to Google Play Services tracking me when it is off, the way that Android is set up makes me very strongly suspect that's what they did.

wepple2• 8 years ago

I’m all-in with google services and acknowledge they have an insane amount of data on me, but very happy to be an iPhone user.

At least it gives some basic form of separation between my phone and the services I use - under the assumption that google services will have to request access to things.

Under google+android, I have no confidence that there won’t be accidental or intentional data harvesting. My wife’s Pixel 2 came with everything enabled by default and that data it Hoover’s up automatically is crazy.

notacoward4• 8 years ago

Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers, who facilitate the worst kinds of third-party privacy violation and about whom most people know very little, should go next. Then the government itself. Then Google, and then Amazon.

BTW, if you want to have some fun, just try to imagine that the the government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it - either for the government itself or for election campaigns. IMO that makes a lot of their otherwise nonsensical or inconsistent behavior much more understandable. Creepy. They totally want to know more about us than Facebook and Google put together; they just don't know how.

bilbo0s• 8 years ago

"...Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers ... should go next...

Why can't it be both?

Serious question.

jacquesm9• 8 years ago

Not only can it be both it should be both (or more correctly: all).

notacoward4• 8 years ago

Resources, including most relevantly attention, are finite. That's why the attention is only on Facebook now, when it should already be on these others as well. Much as I'd love for people to see all of the picture at once when they're trying to make policy, I don't think that's what really happens.

phonebucket• 8 years ago

"Why can't it be both?"

In fairness to the OP, the notion of someone being next is coming from the headline, not the comment.

schnevets• 8 years ago

Because a "loss" can disrupt the momentum and public support that is snowballing with these Facebook headlines. Think about the failed attempt to break up Microsoft in the 90s. Regardless of how you felt about the breakup idea, Congress was spurned at that decision and avoided taking action on other emerging monopolies.

mtreis86• 8 years ago

No need to imagine it - the closing statement given by Grassley during the hearing was basically asking Zuckerberg for help with propaganda.

"So they get a distorted view of it, and — and really we — congressmen get along more than the public thinks. But these attitudes of the public, we've got to change and people of your position and your influence, you can do a lot to change this.

Whether I know you got plenty time around your corporation, through your corporation or privately, anything you can do to reduce this cynicism because we have a — a perfect constitution, maybe it's not perfect, but we got a very good constitution — the longest one written constitution in the history of man — mankind.

And — but if people don't have faith in the institutions of government, and then it's — it's our responsibility to enhance that faith so they have less cynicism in us, you know, we don't have a very strong democracy just because we've got a good constitution.

So I hope that everybody will do whatever they can to help enhance respect for government, including speaking to myself. I got to bend over backwards to do what I can so they don't — so I don't add to that cynicism."

_o_• 8 years ago

I beg to disagree. We must first hit the largest violators as a lot of smaller companies will stop their practices when we do.

nerdponx• 8 years ago

Credit agencies and data brokers

Don't forget ISPs and mobile phone service providers

government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it

Nah, they're just trying to look like they're doing something in response to public outcry.

panarky• 8 years ago

Facebook is in a completely different privacy universe from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter and Snap.

Facebook actively employs dark patterns to get people to over-share. Google does not.

Facebook has a social graph of 2.2 billion people. Google does not.

Facebook has been caught repeatedly, systematically and recklessly leaking personal information to third parties over the last decade and a half. Google has not.

The 84 million profiles Facebook leaked to Cambridge Analytica is the headline, but it's far, far worse than this. Facebook quietly acknowledged that they've also leaked profiles of "most people on Facebook" to "malicious actors" [0]. There's nothing even close to this in the Google universe.

Facebook is the primary vector for subversion of democratic elections around the world (not only in the US, see for example the Philippines [1]). Google is not.

There are many alternatives to Google services that are a click away. There is no real alternative to Facebook.

So yes, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Snap, etc. have a lot of data, so they're on the list. But they're not in the same league as Facebook.

[0] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodri...

notacoward4• 8 years ago

Totally off topic. The question is whether Google should be next after Facebook, not whether it's worse than Facebook. Reminds me of presidential "debates" where every question is just an excuse to trot out the candidate's favorite message whether it has anything to do with the question or not.

JoshMnem• 8 years ago

What about Google's sharing of data with data brokers? Example: the wifi at Starbucks (run by Google) now appears to use Experian's API to verify that your email address exists in Experian's database. I would be surprised if it isn't linking your real identity to your browser fingerprint and/or MAC address. Consumers need the right to use the Internet anonymously.

Once those (often unknown) companies have your MAC address, you can't turn your wifi on within range of a Starbucks without them having the capability to identify you and your location.

neisen• 8 years ago

Most definitely credit agencies first. https://blog.nils.digital/gelvora-data-breach-and-your-perso...

mtgx2• 8 years ago

I expect we'll see some major leaks about Google by the end of the year, too.

wepple2• 8 years ago

My personal gut feel is that in the fairly long history (for a tech co), we’ve seen surprisingly little malicious use of data come from google. In a company of their size I’d expect a lot more screw ups and scandles, so perhaps they deserve a little more trust?

At the same time, they’re at the size and momentum that they should always be under scrutiny even if the answer keeps coming back “yeah they seem to be acting responsibly”. We don’t want to have an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

sixothree2• 8 years ago

The problem I have is the lack of transparency. Google lets you download "all of your data". But it's nothing near the entirety of what they collect about you. It's insulting.

It's time we learn what they know about us. I want to know.

troyvoy882• 8 years ago

I absolutely agree Google has a much wider ecosystem they cover: social media with google plus or whatever is left of it, video via YouTube, Images via google Photos, cloud infrastructure via Compute Engine, google work via G Suit, ISP via Google Fiber etc... All these have Term of Services with very broad language they can dragnet collect whatever they want. I don't mind sharing the information and I don't want the government involve and regulate how private entities work. But I also wouldn't mind having this companies put on the spot and have to explain how they handle the data they gather. How they handle ToS and/or Data breach. Facebook is a speck of dust compare to google.

sixothree2• 8 years ago

You say you don't mind sharing information. Do you mind them collecting information about you outside of what you share?

troyvoy882• 8 years ago

Yes that is the VERY reason why I said wouldn't mind having them put on the spot that way we can ask. Provided the right people are asking the questions. If it comes up through the questioning that they are grabbing information I chose not to share with them. I'll stop using the services and go somewhere else no one has a gun to my head.

kozikow• 8 years ago

Not saying Google is a saint, but it's orders of magnitude better at privacy than Facebook:

- Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app.

- Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time.

- Mostly compliant with GDPR for years prior to the regulation being released. The same can't be said for Facebook.

- Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations.

- I don't work on either right now, but at the time I did Google had way much better internal access controls for employees.

Amassing personal data can be considered unethical on some levels, but amassing personal data can't be equated with being bad at privacy. Among "personal data hoarders" Google is by far the most coginzant about keeping that data private.

sametmax2• 8 years ago

- Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app.

If I remember well, Google was part of PRISM. And it did give data to a malicious state actors. Plus it has analytics, which you can pay to have data on people (although no personal, but personal data from facebook is aggregated and used the same way in the end). Also google let you literally google people to find any data that other service would leak.

It's not as bad, yes. But it's still a lot.

Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time.

I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you.

And it's so big I doubt that any employee inside knows how everything works and everything that is done.

Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations.

Now. But they've been at it for more time. I remember the early days of Google, and it was black SEO everywhere. It became only hard to game the system recently. Even when StackOverflow came out, we had so much spammy clones, and it's not that old.

It also came out at the cost of less relevant results: now I can always find instantly what I know I want, but rarely discover something I'm happy I found about that is related to my current search. The bubble is very strong.

zamalek• 8 years ago

I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you.

Why would they take all that risk when they allow you to opt-out of targetted advertising?

UncleMeat• 8 years ago

Being part of prism was not optional for anybody.

anoplus• 8 years ago

In the age of information, Google obviously has disproportionate power. Society must raise awareness about concentration of power, post more about this topic, demand justice and transparency from the rulers. I think Google workers have special ethical responsibility to demand transparency and trust, organize and resist evil orders. We all have responsibility as a society to demand justice if we want a promising future.

hlecuanda2• 8 years ago

Reprising my comment from a few weeks ago:

Facebook never gave me anything of value in exchange for constantly monitoring and profilingmy behavior online. in fact, as it became ubiquitous,it added a new chore for me: maintaining ever changing privacy options on a defensive profile on their network.

So it takes peoples time, attention, and details on top of behavioral monitoring.

In contrast, Google provides me with a very competent productivity suite, a superb photo-managing software navigation, maps, aggregate traffic data,and a host of tools to actually build a business and educate myself and others.

Plus i get enterprise class security for my account and -arguably- the best web email service.

The day theres a data breach or in this case a breach of trust, im more likely to view google in a better light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook gets my contempt and scorn.

Inb4 "well then don't use Facebook": I don't. But that doesn't stop FB from building a shadow profile on me, so if I want some measure of control over my digital footprint, I have no choice or recourse but to open and maintain a defensive profile whose only purposes are a) claim my username / URL used on most services where I'm provided with such a srfvixe, b) "squat" my name and likeness so I can't be unknowingly impersonated on their network and c) keep up with their ever changing privacy controls
Inb4 "sounds like cringe material from Google's social team": -I don't work for Google. I admit I'd love to, but I'm too old, perhaps. OTOH, I don't see how it's "cringe" since I succinctly describe the services the company does provide for me in exchange for my data and observing my behaviour; services I've used in making a living lately. Try making a living by developing on the FB platform, where every API Iteration makes you re-evaluate your business model.

stewofkc• 8 years ago

Facebook is the perfect company to take all the heat. Mainly because Mark Zuckerberg is such an icon.

https://hackernoon.com/why-facebook-is-the-perfect-represent...

yuhong• 8 years ago

It is funny that my essay on this exact topic don't seem to get much coverage, even though I have been working on the problem for a while now.

Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

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