Before you continue… ... the last bastion of online privacy has gone!

almillar

So do you want to use a company's service without agreeing to their Ts & Cs?
I don't know who your email is with, but if it's a 'free' service, whether you access in a browser or not, they have access to your email.

I'm just not sure I get your point? If it's that Google sucks up lots of data, it ain't new and they ain't the only ones.

rmg1

Just to chuck in my 2p-worth.....

I use a variety of browsers (IE, Chrome and Firefox) both at home and at work and I can't recall ever seeing the popup that's mentioned on here.

I don't think I've got a popup blocker (really should install one, especially at home) and, to be honest, if Google want to analyse my info they probably think I was a complete weirdo as I search for some rather esoteric terms.

Assuming the popup is legit, at least Google have been up-front about collecting the data as opposed to some others I could mention.

mr_fishbulb

On the flip-side of this, I'm really happy with the amount of data google has one me, because of the benefits it brings.

I purposely forward all my emails to my gmail account, plus I send my work calendar and facebook events feed into my Google calendar. Google then reads this information and gives me things such as:

* On Google maps, it knows I have a reservation at a restaurant, so it pins that to the map (along with the time). Makes it easy to find where I'm going.
* It knows I have a trip booked by either reading the confirmation email, or from my calendar, and tells me what the weather is going to be like.
* When I travel somewhere new, it recommends places to visit.
* Google Now tells me my commute time to work and lets me know if there are any delays.
* It reads emails from Amazon and Ebay and tells me what deliveries I have coming up.
* Based on articles I read (either through chrome or Google Newsstand), it suggests other articles I might find interesting. Sometimes they are.

Ben84

I like to keep a relatively low digital profile. People say it's "paranoid" or "what have you got to hide?", as if not wanting to tell marketing companies about my personal life is some kind of suspicious behavior. The truth is, I just don't want to because I don't want to, and that's ok, people feel differently about different things. However, I think everyone should consider a few things. First of all, the data they collect can embarrass you with people you know, because you never know when they're going to suddenly use it to target marketing at you.

It happened to me. I searched for some personal things on my eBay account at home, then later happened to log in to the same account on a work computer. Although I hadn't done any personal searches on the work computer, suddenly - even when logged out of my account, these items were all over the eBay pages when they loaded on that computer. Thanks eBay! I figured out how to turn it off eventually, but wasn't impressed. The there was the time I was invited to that shared google thing for a project. Guess what, google save all the searches and page visits you make - even when the google groups page isn't loaded, because they drop a tracking cookie in your browser, and the entire group can see them if they know where to look! A few people got caught out with some rather odd searches on there, and others were found to have posted about personal life things thinking it was anonymous. I did not look too closely, it wasn't mine to read, but more than a few people went through in great detail. Thankfully I wasn't embarrassed by that one, my searches were very dull, but I haven't forgotten the day everyone got to see what everyone else had been searching and doing online.

Anyway, that pretty much shows the problem. Companies don't look after your personal data like you would, and surprises keep happening. I won't do social networking anything, or free email accounts. People can be massive apologists for the companies, saying it's all in the terms and conditions, but I just don't feel like spending hours figuring out what they mean. Most of it sounds like they can/might something vague or another, so it's hardly a clear explanation of what exactly you're signing up for.

Then there's questions like what happens if someone steals the data about you, and how might it be used? I actually don't know, so that's another reason to hold back rather than share. No hacker yet has the ability to steal data that doesn't exist.

agarnett

Thanks Ben,

You have summed up pretty darn good, I think.

Fact is most people haven't a clue and never will have a clue about the power of combining data.

I do, because I was doing it two decades ago and using the power obtained to achieve 20% response rates for mailshot marketing instead of the then rule of thumb which was a mere ½%. Actually it was a much greater improvement than that because I was breaking out individual mailshots to just 200 or so at a time from an original database of around 15,000 unfiltered propects.

I know some of my competitors obtained the same uncombined database and satisfied themselves with a blanket mailshot to all 15,000, which of course cost a helluva lot more for their ½% than I spent on my tranches of selected groups of 200 or so to achieve my 20% returns.

I liken it to splitting the atom in the surprising amount of power released from what sounds an innocuous thing to do i.e. combining or joining data on the same data subjects (persons) obtained from two or more different sources. It makes tailoring of offers to particular prospects a matter of some childs play. Using it, prospects can often be charmed straight down from the trees and on to the books as very often they can't see they've been played

I was talking to a couple of young data scientists yesterday about all this, and asked them whether they had a rigorous definition of what was meant by "combining data". The answer was that the term was clearly one chosen for its dumbing down qualities i.e. for public consumption. What data scientists at Google and elsewhere are really doing is indulging in the union of sets (is what I was told ).

I think that is what I also must have indulged in also, all those years ago when I combined my prospecting filofax data with someone else's official data and started forming quite nifty conclusions! This may be similar to the idea Google Analytics exploits by noting what you have searched for recently and then selecting offers to put under your nose which it assessed might still fit your requirement when you are on one of their pages a week later. Many of us think we have that sussed, but actually it may be more subtle than first impressions might lead us to think.

The really dangerous side of all this is the profiling that intelligence services and private sector data combiners do. There are a lot of wrongly deduced conclusions which may mean some of us are being discriminated against daily in ways we may never discover.

If we do actually suffer unintended consequences - maybe that is just acceptable collateral damage in the grand scheme of things? ... Which is what, by the way? I sometimes wish I knew!

Bollotom

I had that pop-up this afternoon. Full screen and wouldn't let me go ahead until I'd reviewed my settings for data collection, privacy, Youtube things and each screen on completion had you go back one until all done then the main screen with "I agree" button. Hope that doesn't mean I've cancelled all the bits that matter and they still get to get everything. I have also had it in the past after clearing everything with Ccleaner. Oh, well, I don't do "Funny" websites. Oh aye. I'm in that thar Landan :cool: