InsideGoogle

Google Maps Street View: This Time You’ve Gone Too Far!

This video clearly illustrates the horrible danger posed by Google Maps Street View feature:

I knew it! Bastards.
(via Valleywag)

January 29th, 2008 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Privacy, Google Maps, Services, Humor | no comments

FTC Drafts Online Advertising Privacy Principles

After approving Google’s mega-billion dollar purchase of DoubleClick, the Federal Trade Commission has drafted a set of privacy principles for behavioral targeting in online advertising. The seven page document (PDF) addresses the need for transparency, consumer control of their information, privacy statements, user choice in having their information collected, secure storage of personal info, limited data retention periods, consent to changes in privacy policies, consent to using sensitive personal data in targeted advertising, and non-advertising uses of tracking data.

December 31st, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Privacy | no comments

Orkut Connects With Your Gmail Contacts

Google is slowly and haphazardly integratings the various contact management implementations in its seperate products, now letting you find your Gmail contacts’ Orkut accounts, if they have one. Google’s also building a profile section for your Google Account, though it apparently overlooked privacy in every reasonable way, including leaving you no way to opt-out from profiles and no way to block sharing Reader items with contacts, short of mass-deleting your address book.

It looks like Google is pushing integration of its contact elements too fast and with barely any thought as to the privacy of its users. Google does this every time it launches a new service, and winds up fixing the problem a few days letter. If I worked at Google, I’d send a mass email to the entire company today asking all developers to put a step in the development process that checked for this before any product or feature was released, since they seem to keep screwing this one up every damn time.

UPDATE: Google Maps MyMaps also now has comments and ratings for your custom maps. Google is pushing strong in this area, just missing a lot of details.

December 17th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Google Maps, Privacy, Orkut, Services, Gmail, Email | 2 comments

How To Report Abusing Emails From A Gmail User

I’ve mentioned this before with regards to phishing, but it bears repeating that the same method applies when faced with threatening or abusing email coming from a Gmail email address.

E*, who is a member of our country’s armed forces, and his wife L*, contacted me that they were receiving some awful messages from a Gmail user, making sexual messages toward L and threatening to kill E when he comes home for Thanksgiving. Even though most internet crazies are just harmless idiots, you should always take the proper steps to protect yourself, as you never know when you are dealing with the genuine sociopath.

Just like last time, the proper way of dealing with this is to contact Google. Go to this page and select “I have received a harassing message from a Gmail account.” Paste the full contents of the harassing email. Google should get back to you and hopefully help you fix the problem. If that doesn’t work, and even if it does, you should your local police department so they can look into it and protect you if it seems like a legitimate threat.

Last night my husband and I both got crazy emails from someone using gmail. The email basically said that they was going to kill my husband when he comes home for thanksgiving and that they have do crazy things with me. I really need to find out who {redacted}@gmail.com is. Please help me with this problem.

There are some scary people you meet on the internet, but the first thing to remember is that they are mostly just idiots with an email address. They usually rely on anonimity to harass, but won’t actual get up and threaten you. In most cases, you have more of a chance of making their life hell than they do of hurting you, and taking the proper steps to protect yourself should make it go away very quickly.

Hope I could help. It’s always worth remembering that I am not Google’s support department. I don’t work for Google, and I can’t fix the problem all the time. I can usually dispense advice, but your best bet is to contact Google directly and hope they can help you. If you contacted Google already and their notoriously lax support didn’t get back to you, then you should contact me and I’ll try to help.

* - obviously, I’m trying to protect their privacy by leaving out their real names

November 16th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Privacy, Services, Gmail, Email | 4 comments

Microsoft and Google Battling It Out Over DoubleClick

Last week, Microsoft and Google were participants in a U.S. Senate committee hearing, arguing about Google’s proposed purchase of DoubeClick. Microsoft is arguing that the deal should be blocked because it would make Google too powerful and squash competition (I know, I know). Google argued back that Microsoft’s assertion that Google/DoubleClick will take advantage of user data is ridiculous, since Microsoft has more data on users than anybody else.

I know the Google/DoubleClick deal has just been assumed as an eventuality, but what if Microsoft actually succeeded at blocking it? What would be next for Google, and would DoubleClick survive all the upheaval intact? Right now, we’re mostly looking at sparring between the two companies, but if Microsoft f’s up Google’s megabillion dollar deal, it could be war.

UPDATE: Here’s Google’s David Drummond talking to Congress:

October 1st, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Privacy, DoubleClick, Microsoft, Advertising | no comments

Google Search Privacy Explained

Google put together this YouTube video explaining many of its privacy policies. The video’s got some nice whiteboard-y goodness:

You can see how their new privacy policies erase only a portion of your IP, but all of your cookie ID. While the video claims the log contains no personal information, it does not address the fact that your search query may contain personal or embarassing information.

(via the official Google blog)

August 23rd, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Privacy, History, Search, General | no comments