Google Updates Privacy Settings
Hello All, A prosperous and healthy New Year to you all. I have been swamped these last few weeks so I’m just getting around to doing a little online “jotting”. For those of you out there that maybe using some Google service or the other (hard not to), you would be interested to know that the tech giant has gone ahead and updated their privacy policy.
Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering, in a post on the Official Google Blog said that “In just over a month we will make some changes to our privacy policies and Google Terms of Service. This stuff matters, so we wanted to explain what’s changing, why and what these changes mean for users.” Basically what Google has decided to do is to treat you as a unique user across most of Google’s services, such as Blogger, Google Calendar, Google+, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Docs, etc. data will be shared across these different services so that you the user get a better a better online “experience”. In my opinion it also opens up the potential for new services and marketing opportunities for Google, increasing the number of ways that they can utilise your data. You can get a breakdown of the policy that will be effective March 1, 2012 here.
There are those who are understandably upset (or will soon be) about this new policy change. I would just like to say that Google is already in possession of all this private information, they are just telling you now that they will be sharing it across all their services. You agree to any privacy policy on any Google service and basically you will be agreeing across all their services, if and when you decide to use them. Should you be concerned? My take on the issue, is that you should always be concerned, but practical. If you are concerned about your privacy then maybe you shouldn’t give out too much information, and while Google is a tech giant and you would expect that they would/will protect your data as much as is possible, anyone can be hacked.We know not how Google plans to capitalise on this new privacy policy, and use your information, we can only wait and see and then decide.
To help you better “understand” what they are up to, see the video below created by Google.
