I've often thought about writing at length on this, but I've never took the time to do so. I don't have that much time this evening, so I'm going to start with something light and fluffy: Google's privacy policy change on March 1.
An extremely brief take on the new privacy policy is that Google will now be able to take your data from a variety of its services -- remember, that includes YouTube -- and offer you better targeted advertisements.
There are a lot of websites and media outlets saying that this is going to be the end of civilization as we know it. That's a bit overblown.
1. Google (probably) isn't tracking you if you're not logged into one of their websites. I'm almost always "logged in" because I leave Gmail running in the background.
2. I heartily recommend checking out http://google.com/dashboard to see what info they DO have on you and change the appropriate settings.
3. Yes, it's possible that Google could collect more data on you if you're using the (brilliant) Chrome browser. If you want tobe feel more secure, I'd recommend that you use the Iron browser, which is almost identical to Chrome. Do note that they're generally a couple versions out of date, though.
4. Yes, Google (and other 'sites) can track you with Cookies. You can go the nuclear route and daily wipe out all of your Cookies with something like CCleaner. I do. (Warning: read the fine manual before using it. Yes, that's a kinder and gentler way of saying RTFM. And learn about what a Cookie is and what it can do.)
5. Some folks have mentioned that you should try http://duckduckgo.com instead of Google Search. While they are similar, DDG doesn't have a "limit search by date range" feature (I use that feature all the time on Google) and generally doesn't return enough entries. As an example, I DDG'd one of our new members and everything came up shiny. I then tried the exact same Google search and found out that the new member was a spambot. YMMV.
6. Opt out of Google Ads.
There's a rather good NPR radio bit that gives you some more ideas. The ones I mention above parallel some of the ones suggested by NPR.
An extremely brief take on the new privacy policy is that Google will now be able to take your data from a variety of its services -- remember, that includes YouTube -- and offer you better targeted advertisements.
There are a lot of websites and media outlets saying that this is going to be the end of civilization as we know it. That's a bit overblown.
1. Google (probably) isn't tracking you if you're not logged into one of their websites. I'm almost always "logged in" because I leave Gmail running in the background.
2. I heartily recommend checking out http://google.com/dashboard to see what info they DO have on you and change the appropriate settings.
3. Yes, it's possible that Google could collect more data on you if you're using the (brilliant) Chrome browser. If you want to
4. Yes, Google (and other 'sites) can track you with Cookies. You can go the nuclear route and daily wipe out all of your Cookies with something like CCleaner. I do. (Warning: read the fine manual before using it. Yes, that's a kinder and gentler way of saying RTFM. And learn about what a Cookie is and what it can do.)
5. Some folks have mentioned that you should try http://duckduckgo.com instead of Google Search. While they are similar, DDG doesn't have a "limit search by date range" feature (I use that feature all the time on Google) and generally doesn't return enough entries. As an example, I DDG'd one of our new members and everything came up shiny. I then tried the exact same Google search and found out that the new member was a spambot. YMMV.
6. Opt out of Google Ads.
There's a rather good NPR radio bit that gives you some more ideas. The ones I mention above parallel some of the ones suggested by NPR.