Google’s new privacy policies will be applied on March 1st, 2012, and there are already a large number of persons who are not in favor of this update. If you still haven0t taken a look at the new policies, we strongly recommend you to do so. Basically, Google would be able to track you even further, monitoring you from a lot of services owned by the Mountain View Company.
For example, Google would be able to gather, use and share information obtained from your browsing behavior. But what information could be tracked?. Well, these are some examples:
- Device information (hardware model, operating system version, etc.)
- Log information: details of how you use Google’s services, such as your search queries.
- Location information: your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device.
- Unique application numbers.
- Local storage.
- Cookies and anonymous identifiers.
Personally, I don’t feel very comfortable knowing a single company is tracking my information in such a way. If you’d like to remove your information* from Google’s history archive, you just follow these easy steps:
1.- Sign into your Google account.
2.- Go to https://www.google.com/history
3.- Click “remove all Web History”.
4.- Click “ok.”
There’s still more you should know. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we can read a warning regarding this issue:
[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.
If you’re not familiar with these new policies, you could read this article on the Daily Mail where you can read a good summary of what this changes mean to your privacy.
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Tags: google policies, online privacy, privacy, privacy policies
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