Just how much does google know about you?

[andyandy]

I know this isn't a new concern, but the potential does seem to grow pretty rapidly:

take the launch of the new google phone....google will potentially know your internet browsing habits, your text messages, your emails, your call durations and destinations and your GPS tracked location....

is such a concentration of information in one compnay something to worry about? Is this just the future - an electronic age where nothing is private?


Discuss............

 

[Ladewig]

I know this isn't a new concern, but the potential does seem to grow pretty rapidly:

take the launch of the new google phone....google will potentially know your internet browsing habits, your text messages, your emails, your call durations and destinations and your GPS tracked location....

is such a concentration of information in one compnay something to worry about? Is this just the future - an electronic age where nothing is private?


Discuss............

Why would I care if they knew my call durations?

 

[madurobob]

I don't think google knows much about my internet browsing habits, either. My ISP uses dynamic IP addressing, so I get a new one every time I log on. Those "smart" websites that claim to know where I am when I visit often identify me as in Atlanta, Tallahassee, Gainesville, etc... but never NC where live. If I do something at a website that gets my IP address blocked - I just tell my router to log off, then back on and its fixed.

And I'm pretty stingy about cookies.

 

[Alt+F4]

take the launch of the new google phone....google will potentially know your internet browsing habits, your text messages, your emails, your call durations and destinations and your GPS tracked location....

Verizon Wireless has known all about this about me for years. Why is it any different that Google is doing it now too?

 

[Cynic]

Because Google uses the information they gather.

 

[Alt+F4]

Because Google uses the information they gather.

Well then I hope all this information will at least get me into the correct demographic for advertising. I'm a 45 year-old woman who gets 20 spams a day telling me how to get free Viagra.

 

[andyandy]

Verizon Wireless has known all about this about me for years. Why is it any different that Google is doing it now too?

it's not limited to google, but they are a high profile example (and probably one of the largest collectors of personal data...)

Why would I care if they knew my call durations?

true - not so important/useful that one.

 

[fuelair]

To answer the title question, not flipping much. If you use the far most prevalent version of my name, I am not listed in the 98 hits brought up. If you do not have a version of the normally unused version of my name no chance. If for some reason you have the normally unused version of my name you get four places I may be living.

So far, I'm not worried.

 

[fuelair]

And if you already know where I am living.........

 

[INRM]

I personally think this is dangerous that one company should have so much information on one person. It's a potential privacy nightmare.

The thing that's really disturbing also is that the law can't seem to keep up with the technological advancement either due to the lack of willingness to exert effort on the matter, or a sheer inability to keep up with it.

About two years ago IBM had proposed a device called a memory-aid which was to essentially use the various sensors on the phone, combine them together, and use A.I. algorithms to cluster the data, and enable the phone to act like a virtual assistant that would remember everything. They wanted to integrate this into all new cell-phones.

I expressed worry that such a phone could pose a serious privacy issue as it would allow identity-thieves and hackers to gather enormous amounts of information on people, and would also pose a way for the government to gather enormous concentrations of information on individuals. The FBI, for example has the ability to activate the speaker on a phone, even when the user has shut it off; it would be logical to conclude that they could do the same with a system like this. The NSA had engaged in massive warrantless wiretapping and could easily just tap all this data and analyze it, and has in it's possession petabytes of data. (I posted a thread on the Computers and the Internet Forum some time back which featured several reliable links in it)

More recently I've come to the attention of an NSA development called AQAINT (AcQuiring Answers for INTelligence), developed by ARDA, and IARPA (a DARPA like organization geared specifically towards intelligence) which would effectively scan through all the data run through it, and using A.I. algorithms, could intelligently cluster the data and compile dossiers on everybody of such detail that it could actually gain insights into a person's personality, determine how they think, what they would be willing to do, not do, etc. Even people who worked on it, felt that it could be a potential privacy nightmare. They have been working on the ability for a computer to intelligently analyze visual data, which coupled to facial recognition, could allow cameras to be coupled into the equation. Combined with all the data aggregated over the internet, phone-calls, surveillance camera data, (and of course, all the organized collected-data from these proposed IBM memory aids would be included), then intelligently sorted out, the government would essentially know everything about everybody, even insights into their personalities and thinking patterns. They'd know everything about everybody.

Here's some links which talk about AQAINT

http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/nsa-seeks-holy-grail-of-spy-technology/
http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/2009/02/nsa-seeks-holy-grail-of-spy-technology.html
http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/aquaint/index.html
- http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/aquaint/aquaintI.html
- http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/aquaint/aquaintII.html


INRM

 

[Fiona]

INRM what is it that makes you think that "personality" exists: that "thought patterns" exist: that a person themselves knows "what they would be willing to do", much less anybody else?

 

[Cynic]

INRM what is it that makes you think that "personality" exists: that "thought patterns" exist: that a person themselves knows "what they would be willing to do", much less anybody else?

As a whole, people are notoriously predictable. Individually there might be a lot of noise, but patterns emerge and such individuals are the least aware of their own patterns. The project sounds interesting to me, from a scientific standpoint. Lots can be done with a vast amount of data like that, especially if you can correlate it with actual behavior. Of course a scientific institution would blind the subject names. The NSA would not.

 

[andyandy]

As a whole, people are notoriously predictable. Individually there might be a lot of noise, but patterns emerge and such individuals are the least aware of their own patterns. The project sounds interesting to me, from a scientific standpoint. Lots can be done with a vast amount of data like that, especially if you can correlate it with actual behavior. Of course a scientific institution would blind the subject names. The NSA would not.

I remember reading a new scientist article in which they'd developed some sort of alogorthim to sort out different users of search engines - faced with x amount of searches from the same IP address they could pretty accurately predict the number of different searchers, when each one was searching and build up a pretty accurate profile of that person in terms of age, location, ethnicity, job, hobbies etc etc. Humans are pretty pretty predictable creatures - i don't think there are that many different templates you need to start from

 

[GreyICE]

People are inherently predictable animals. If you think you're not predictable, you're simply not thinking about it correctly. For instance, take shopping. You think you go shopping irregularly. But do you? For instance, if I know what food you buy, I may or may not know when you'll next go shopping. But if I know what food you buy for a year, I'll know when you next need to go shopping. If that pattern changes, maybe you got a boyfriend. Or maybe you're sheltering someone we're looking for. Or maybe you've changed something.

You think you're spontaneous? Hilarious. You tend to go to work at the same time, along the same routes. You tend to stay for similar times. You tend to go home the same ways. If you stop on the way home, you tend to stop at the same subset of places. You tend to eat at similar restaurants, in similar price ranges, with similar demographics. By analyzing shopping records, I could determine your friends (if you're checking out at the same store within a set time period of someone else a statistically significant number of times, you're probably shopping with them). Both of you pay for an amusement park, or the same bar tab, etc.? I can tell your friends. Records of websites you view (nevermind forum posts, etc.)? I can tell your politics, etc.

Given sufficient information about you, I can predict EVERYTHING you do. Much more to the point, I can detect every change. Gathering that information is rapidly approaching the point where it is automatic. Moreover, I do not see how this is avoidable. In fact, it is the opposite of avoidable - it's necessitated by economic forces.

This is something we should consider as a society.

 

[Ladewig]

The FBI, for example has the ability to activate the speaker on a phone, even when the user has shut it off;

Do you have a reliable citation for this claim?

 

[madurobob]

Do you have a reliable citation for this claim?

This was true of old-school phones. They never really "turned off" the speaker when you hung them up, so the phone could be used to listen to goings on at the house even when hung up. Digital phones, cordless phones, cell phones, etc... all turn off and there is no similar listening capability.

 

[INRM]

GreyICE,

Gathering that information is rapidly approaching the point where it is automatic. Moreover, I do not see how this is avoidable. In fact, it is the opposite of avoidable - it's necessitated by economic forces.

There need to be laws and treaties to regulate this.

This is something we should consider as a society.

Agreed, but either nobody seems to care, the law hasn't caught up with the technology, and ethical standards as a result are not being kept in line with scientific advancement.

Science without morality, as anybody with a brain knows, is extremely dangerous.

 

[Fiona]

People are inherently predictable animals. If you think you're not predictable, you're simply not thinking about it correctly. For instance, take shopping. You think you go shopping irregularly. But do you? For instance, if I know what food you buy, I may or may not know when you'll next go shopping. But if I know what food you buy for a year, I'll know when you next need to go shopping. If that pattern changes, maybe you got a boyfriend. Or maybe you're sheltering someone we're looking for. Or maybe you've changed something.

You think you're spontaneous? Hilarious. You tend to go to work at the same time, along the same routes. You tend to stay for similar times. You tend to go home the same ways. If you stop on the way home, you tend to stop at the same subset of places. You tend to eat at similar restaurants, in similar price ranges, with similar demographics. By analyzing shopping records, I could determine your friends (if you're checking out at the same store within a set time period of someone else a statistically significant number of times, you're probably shopping with them). Both of you pay for an amusement park, or the same bar tab, etc.? I can tell your friends. Records of websites you view (nevermind forum posts, etc.)? I can tell your politics, etc.

Given sufficient information about you, I can predict EVERYTHING you do. Much more to the point, I can detect every change. Gathering that information is rapidly approaching the point where it is automatic. Moreover, I do not see how this is avoidable. In fact, it is the opposite of avoidable - it's necessitated by economic forces.

This is something we should consider as a society.

If this was addressed to me I think I did not make myself clear. The examples that you give about what you can say about an individual seem to make my point: of course we are predictable in our behaviour. But that says nothing at all about what we might do in odd circumstances.

For example it is absolutely true that if my shopping pattern changes something has changed. So what? There are loads of reason that will happen and there are loads of people at any given time it will happen to.

And yes, if you want to you can tell my politics from my posting. So what? They are not a secret. If they were I woud not be posting about them, would I?

You don't need to analyse my shopping records to find out who my friends are: we have CCTV for that. I object to CCTV but the vast majority of people in this country seem to actively welcome it. But again, I have school records and employment records and all sorts of things: It would not be hard to find out who I hang out with if you wanted to: and that is no different from any period in living memory.

What I do not see is any evidence that all this increase in information makes the use of that informaion practical: if anything it has the opposite effect. I am fairly sure that much more was known about people in rural and feudal societies than at any time since.

 

[TheDoLittle]

I have been one of the first people to have a Google Account.

I use Chrome, but my preferred browser is still Firefox.

I use the iGoogle front page as my browser default. It contains links to my Gmail, Reader, Google Maps, a variety of news feeds, Google Maps, Google Docs, and a collection of about 100 page links I store there when I use multiple computer.

I was one of the first people to get a G1 and use it almost daily to make calls with Google Voice, chat with Google Chat, Tweet with Twidroid, and use Google Navigator. I even finally go Latitude to work correctly so others can track me with my phone. I've even been toying with my new Layars augmented reality browser (which is my new favorite toy!!).

I've stored many of my notes and papers in Google Docs. I even made some of them available for public view.

I use Picasa quite regularly. In fact, I just finished updating photos I took of my Aunt's huge Barbie doll collection. I use the offline version on all my computers to help organize my images, much more often than I use Bridge and Lightroom.

I use SketchUp in my classroom as a way to teach 3D graphic principles and practice. I use Google Groups with the student group as an easy way to communicate.

And to top this all off, Google, Inc. does in fact have my SSN and TXID number on file as I did some contract work for them many years ago.

So am I a shill or what?

 

[Fiona]

Well you won't have to worry what to do when they come for X: cos you are first