Google collects a mind boggling amount of data on users and has created an easier way to let users opt out.
Google has unveiled a service called “Dashboard” which helps users manage their privacy information by showing them the data Google is collecting on them across its most popular services.
The Dashboard shows you all the services you are using under your Google account, and gives you a single panel by which you can edit the privacy settings on each service you use. The Dashboard tracks services including your news alerts, Blogger account, public calendars, contact lists, Docs stored in Google Docs, Gmail activity, iGoogle gadgets, Orkut information, Picasa albums, Profile page, Reader, Google Talk and Voice data.
It also shows what Google has on file for your last Web searches and the latest YouTube videos you watched.
Indeed, the Dashboard offers a startling database of just how closely Google is watching your online activities, as it relates to Google products and services. The Dashboard notes that seven more services are not yet part of the Dashboard. These are. Fusion Tables, Google App Engine, Google Groups, Google Sites, Google Squared, Google Wave and Google Webmaster Tools.
Other services that collect even more data about you, if you were to use them, are also not included, such as Google Powermeter, which you could use to monitor the amount of power your house was consuming if you had a “smart meter” or similar power monitoring appliance tied in to Google’s service or you signed up via your energy company (only a handful of local energy companies have partnered with Google on this program.). Ditto for Google’s new URL shortening service, DNS resolver and myriad others.
Below is the Scribd presentation that Google has published that indicates its “philosophy” to privacy, and gives some insight as to how it uses IP addresses to gather data about you.
Google Dashboard is a good step in the right direction to address the outrage CEO Eric Schmidt caused last week by his frightening remarks about privacy. He hinted that data collected on individuals by Google could be turned over to the government.
The Dashboard shows you what Google sees about you, even on services you may have forgotten you signed up to use. While you might intellectually know that just about everything you touch on Google is being tracked, it is a startling experience to see just how much information is being gathered on your online habits. For instance, your Web history doesn’t just include which Web sites you visited, but the images you looked at, the news you clicked on, the products you looked at, the addresses you looked up in Google maps, blogs you read, books you scanned.
Can you imagine how this information, casually given by you, could be used against you? Let’s say someone with your last name is linked to a eco-terrorist crime and you happen to be a green-planet junkie. Your Google profile is quite innocently loaded up with news, books and so on that document the outrageous ways human beings have treated the planet. Would law enforcement agents think you are the same person they suspect of the crime?
OK, maybe I watch too much TV. … but seriously, looking at the Dashboard makes me want to use Bing/Yahoo for more of my online searches. As is always the case with powerful corporate giants — they turn out to be their own worst enemies.
What do you think when you visit your Google Dashboard page?
Please visit the Google Subnet home page for more news, blogs and podcasts. Sign up for the weekly Google newsletter. (Click on News/Google News Alert.) More blog posts from Google Subnet:Subscribe to all Google Subnet bloggers or Follow Google Subnet on Twitter Julie Bort on Twitter.
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