Posted: 9/30/2010 3:18:38 AM EDT
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I was watching a movie on netflix instant view yesterday (The Proposal, through Firefox) and decided to check my gmail. In the movie, for just one scene, Ryan Reynolds and his dad were playing golf. I open up gmail, and at the top of my inbox I see an ad for "such-and-such's wonder Divot Replacer." I do not golf. In recent memory, I haven't emailed, recieved email, or searched for anything golf related, nor visited any sites that involve golf. The movie is not about golfing, and in deed, in that scene they were merely driving golf balls into a lake. So I don't understand why Google profiled me to be receptive to golf ads unless they were aware that I was actually watching people golfing. Which kinda creeps me out. My buddy was searching forums for information on laser range finders for hunting. When he googled "Cabela's", it popped up with the Cabela's mainpage, and then the next search result was "Buy Laser Rangefinders At Cabela's." So... This may be a really stupid question, but does Google know that I was watching a golfing scene in a movie? How much of what I do on my computer, and online, does Google have access to, and are they public about how much of that information they use/index/store? Is there an email service that I can use that won't collect my personal data, profile me, etc.? Someplace with a commitment to personal privacy, etc, etc? And how many different entities are involved with email trafficking, and how many of them can actually read my email? I know that's a ton of requested information, so if anyone knows of a good place to start researching myself, I'd be much obliged. Thanks! |
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you ask some good questions and i think many people do not want to hear or consider the implications. being able to identify the scene of the movie is a stretch, but google has access to a massive amount of information and their computers are churning away trying to link it all together. every search you run through google is stored. and if you are signed into gmail or any other google service at the time, it's connected to your account. their goal is to know what you are going to search for before you do -and have the ads ready to go when you do. much of the inner workings are proprietary and are not disclosed. what i've not been able to get a good handle on is how much data sharing goes on between companies, banks, retailers, facebook, potentially medical records, and google. with all that information, you can build a pretty decent behavior model for a person. from there and with the potential for abuse in mind, the "pre-crime" idea doesn't seem so far away. i don't think having your mail read is as much of a concern as the possibility of having a computer algorithm flag you for your online reading and searching habits. when i saw j. nap talk about the need for dhs to have greater access to information and linking computer systems and databases together, this is one of the first things that came to mind. |
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Google developing eavesdropping software
* Alert * Retweet Audio 'fingerprint' for content-relevant ads By Faultline • Get more from this author Posted in Applications, 3rd September 2006 08:02 GMT Free whitepaper – The Register Guide to Enterprise Virtualization Comment The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard that Google is working on a system that listens to what's on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was "that's cool, but dangerous". The idea appeared in Technology Review citing Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, who says these ideas will show up eventually in real Google products - sooner rather than later. The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject. And, of course, we wouldn’t put it past Google to store that information away, along with the search terms it keeps that you've used, and the web pages you have visited, to help it create a personalised profile that feeds you just the right kind of adverts/content. And given that it is trying to develop alternative approaches to TV advertising, it could go the extra step and help send "content relevant" advertising to your TV as well. We suspect that such a world would be rather eerie, with a constant feeling of déjà vu every time anyone watched TV. Technology Review said Google talked about this software in Europe last June, and that it breaks sound into a five-second snippets to pick out audio from a TV, reducing the snippet to a digital "fingerprint", which it matches on an internet server. Given the furore caused when AOL released searches on the internet, there might be more than a few civil liberties activists less than happy for Google to put this idea into practice. Also, given that Google provides the software link between its search software and the microphone, it's a small step to making the same link to any webcams attached to the PC. Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage. Google says that its fingerprinting technology makes it impossible for the company (or anyone else) to eavesdrop on other sounds in the room, such as personal conversations, because the conversion to a fingerprint is made on the PC, and a fingerprint can't be reversed, as it's only an identity. But we should think that "spyware" might take on an extra meaning if someone less scrupulous decided on a similar piece of software. The Google program converts sound into graphs, weeds out background noise, and reduces the graphs to key features that can then be translated into just four bytes of information, so that the fingerprints for an entire year of television programming would add up to no more than a few gigabytes, the company said. Meanwhile, in an unconnected announcement this week, Google said it has signed a multi-year agreement with online auction giant eBay, to provide text-based advertising outside the US. The companies also plan to launch a "click-to-call" advertising function on eBay using Skype and Google Talk. Copyright © 2006, Faultline |
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Quoted:
This is also something to consider for those using Android phones.. not only do they know what you're doing on the phone and how often you're doing it, you're potentially feeding them real-time GPS positioning information while you're doing it. That feature only works if you allow it to. |
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Quoted:
you ask some good questions and i think many people do not want to hear or consider the implications. being able to identify the scene of the movie is a stretch, but google has access to a massive amount of information and their computers are churning away trying to link it all together. every search you run through google is stored. and if you are signed into gmail or any other google service at the time, it's connected to your account. their goal is to know what you are going to search for before you do -and have the ads ready to go when you do. much of the inner workings are proprietary and are not disclosed. what i've not been able to get a good handle on is how much data sharing goes on between companies, banks, retailers, facebook, potentially medical records, and google. with all that information, you can build a pretty decent behavior model for a person. from there and with the potential for abuse in mind, the "pre-crime" idea doesn't seem so far away. i don't think having your mail read is as much of a concern as the possibility of having a computer algorithm flag you for your online reading and searching habits. when i saw j. nap talk about the need for dhs to have greater access to information and linking computer systems and databases together, this is one of the first things that came to mind. Lots of good points. In general, Google's not sharing the data at all. They use that data to display ads to you from other places, but they consider the data they develop to be one of their most important assets, and there's no reason for them to share it. |
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Thanks for all the responses, folks. I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but it's good to know. So within the next twenty years, the youthful porn habits and email of all our elected representatives are going to be sitting in a data vault in google somewhere? |
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Thanks for all the responses, folks. I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but it's good to know. So within the next twenty years, the youthful porn habits and email of all our elected representatives are going to be sitting in a data vault in google somewhere? In theory, Google dumps everything older than 18 months. |
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Quoted: How do you block said Google scripts, and what exactly are they? :) I use Firefox and AdBlockPlus to selectively block scripts on various web pages or block whole ad sites. When you click on the ABP button it shows you everything the current page is loading. |
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I never use Google if I don't have to. If you have Firefox, go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13036/ which will add Startpage to your Search Box in the upper right hand corner. Startpage doesn't record or store info about your searches or your IP address. When your search results come up, there is an option to open the website via Startpage's proxy service if you wish. If I understand Firefox correctly, when you enter a website in the address bar at the top of the browser it automatically uses Google to take you directly to it. To avoid that I always use the aforementioned Search Box with Statrpage enabled as the default to go to websites. I also have the Adblock Plus and BetterPrivacy add-ons installed and I've set my FF History to clear EVERYTHING after each logoff except for stored website passwords. |
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Hmmm...I've been using AdBlock, but I didn't know about ABP. Definitely gonna check that one out. Thanks! Quoted: Quoted: How do you block said Google scripts, and what exactly are they? :) I use Firefox and AdBlockPlus to selectively block scripts on various web pages or block whole ad sites. When you click on the ABP button it shows you everything the current page is loading. |
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Thanks! I'll be checking those out! Quoted: I never use Google if I don't have to. If you have Firefox, go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13036/ which will add Startpage to your Search Box in the upper right hand corner. Startpage doesn't record or store info about your searches or your IP address. When your search results come up, there is an option to open the website via Startpage's proxy service if you wish. If I understand Firefox correctly, when you enter a website in the address bar at the top of the browser it automatically uses Google to take you directly to it. To avoid that I always use the aforementioned Search Box with Statrpage enabled as the default to go to websites. I also have the Adblock Plus and BetterPrivacy add-ons installed and I've set my FF History to clear EVERYTHING after each logoff except for stored website passwords. |