The Times: Tech column - Google under attack/Bluetooth risks
By David Rowan
WHEN NEW programmers start work at Google's headquarters in California, they are reminded of the company's "core" value: "Don't be evil." Lately, though, Google has become the Devil, if critics of its groundbreaking e-mail service are to be believed. G-mail, launched four weeks ago as the world's most convenient free webmail service, now faces legal challenges, a barrage of international privacy complaints, and the disdain of bloggers and tech writers alike.
The jokey April Fool's Day announcement belied the company's deadly serious challenge to Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. G-mail would offer a vast one gigabyte of free storage space, 167 times that of Yahoo! Nor would there be any of those annoying pop-up adverts to fund the service: you would merely see "relevant" text adverts on your G-mail web page, placed there by software that automatically scans e-mails looking for key words.
Suddenly Google was recast as Big Brother, keen to know the contents of the world's digital messages for its own commercial purposes. Last week Liz Figueroa, a California state senator, introduced a law seeking to ban such a service and so protect your "most intimate and private e-mail thoughts"; the civil-rights group Privacy International, meanwhile, filed complaints in 16 countries claiming that G-mail breached everything from confidentiality to data-protection law.
In fact, there is little to worry about in Google's plans to make money from its knowledge of your e-mail correspondences. For years websites have built profiles of users to target them automatically with adverts or (like Amazon) to recommend suitable purchases. The problem lies in Google's casual assumption that it may cross-match your e-mail account with your history of web searches. Each time you visit its website, it places a "cookie" (a line of programming code) inside your computer so as to identify it. If Google knows who you are from your e-mails, think how much more it will learn from your web searches -everything from your health concerns to holiday plans. Imagine how attractive such data could be to identity thieves, government snoopers, even divorce lawyers.
Google says that "no humans" will access your e-mails to sell you things, but its loose privacy policy ensures that it will store them for years, even after you have closed your account -and that it may disclose their content on a simple "governmental request". The company's founders have been taken aback by the controversy that G-mail has generated, and have promised to look again at the terms of use. You might want to make a habit of regularly deleting your Google cookie in your web-browsing program -or, better still, use a separate browser when accessing G-mail, so that your search history remains anonymous.
* IT MIGHT let hackers into some mobile phones, but Bluetooth wireless technology still has its fans. Indeed, if you believe the media, thousands of us are using Bluetooth-enabled handsets to arrange random sexual encounters with strangers. The UK-born phenomenon has its own name, "toothing" (remember "dogging?), and even a salacious online beginner's guide which allows "toothers" to share their experiences, typically on trains or aircraft. Just one spoilsport question: it's certainly a gift of a tale to the hacks in hot pursuit, but hoaxers aside, has anyone yet actually "toothed"?
(The Times, April 27 2004)
WHEN NEW programmers start work at Google's headquarters in California, they are reminded of the company's "core" value: "Don't be evil." Lately, though, Google has become the Devil, if critics of its groundbreaking e-mail service are to be believed. G-mail, launched four weeks ago as the world's most convenient free webmail service, now faces legal challenges, a barrage of international privacy complaints, and the disdain of bloggers and tech writers alike.
The jokey April Fool's Day announcement belied the company's deadly serious challenge to Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. G-mail would offer a vast one gigabyte of free storage space, 167 times that of Yahoo! Nor would there be any of those annoying pop-up adverts to fund the service: you would merely see "relevant" text adverts on your G-mail web page, placed there by software that automatically scans e-mails looking for key words.
Suddenly Google was recast as Big Brother, keen to know the contents of the world's digital messages for its own commercial purposes. Last week Liz Figueroa, a California state senator, introduced a law seeking to ban such a service and so protect your "most intimate and private e-mail thoughts"; the civil-rights group Privacy International, meanwhile, filed complaints in 16 countries claiming that G-mail breached everything from confidentiality to data-protection law.
In fact, there is little to worry about in Google's plans to make money from its knowledge of your e-mail correspondences. For years websites have built profiles of users to target them automatically with adverts or (like Amazon) to recommend suitable purchases. The problem lies in Google's casual assumption that it may cross-match your e-mail account with your history of web searches. Each time you visit its website, it places a "cookie" (a line of programming code) inside your computer so as to identify it. If Google knows who you are from your e-mails, think how much more it will learn from your web searches -everything from your health concerns to holiday plans. Imagine how attractive such data could be to identity thieves, government snoopers, even divorce lawyers.
Google says that "no humans" will access your e-mails to sell you things, but its loose privacy policy ensures that it will store them for years, even after you have closed your account -and that it may disclose their content on a simple "governmental request". The company's founders have been taken aback by the controversy that G-mail has generated, and have promised to look again at the terms of use. You might want to make a habit of regularly deleting your Google cookie in your web-browsing program -or, better still, use a separate browser when accessing G-mail, so that your search history remains anonymous.
* IT MIGHT let hackers into some mobile phones, but Bluetooth wireless technology still has its fans. Indeed, if you believe the media, thousands of us are using Bluetooth-enabled handsets to arrange random sexual encounters with strangers. The UK-born phenomenon has its own name, "toothing" (remember "dogging?), and even a salacious online beginner's guide which allows "toothers" to share their experiences, typically on trains or aircraft. Just one spoilsport question: it's certainly a gift of a tale to the hacks in hot pursuit, but hoaxers aside, has anyone yet actually "toothed"?
(The Times, April 27 2004)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, April 27, 2004
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