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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Okay so how many people on this list use Google as their
primary search engine? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>You are all talking ad infinitum about email privacy in
relation to spam... what about</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>the intrusion of cookies and spyder bots that harvest
harvest email addresses</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>off of servers, and proxy type spying.. where you use a
search like google and</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>they record all your information.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>No this privacy issue is a major deal, and cannot be
confined to the spam issue.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am surprised how in this discussion in relation to
Microsoft how nobody brings</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>up the fact that they promote a lot of this spying on you.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Since I have installed windows xp on this one machine
here, I got popups</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>conrtinually advertising ironically that I should buy this
popup filter so I will</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>not get these annoying popups anymore. Well I did not buy,
I just went into</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>kazaa and downloaded one and it works fine.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>But really that is small potatoes compared to the spying
that google does on us all.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I do regular spyware checks on my system for anything I
picked up while surfing, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>using Ad Aware and Spybot search and destroy. They seem to
do the job working</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>together, but still this whole cookie problem and sites
like google I find very alarming.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am not a delusional parnoid, conspiracy theorist, but it
does bother me that such</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>sites like google are never challenged about their
methods, and everyone seems</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>to keep on using them, not to mention the fact that they
never tell anybody what</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>exactly they are doing with all this gleaned and harvested
information.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Yes indeed internet security and privacy issues are a LOT
bigger.. than spam...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278746.html">http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278746.html</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://google-watch.org">http://google-watch.org</A>
<BR><BR><BR>1. Google's immortal cookie: <BR>Google was the first search engine
to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites
were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later,
and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the
standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique
ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google
cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your
unique ID number. <BR><BR>2. Google records everything they can: <BR>For all
searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date,
your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is
customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry
as "IP delivery based on geolocation." <BR><BR>3. Google retains all data
indefinitely: <BR>Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that
they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
<BR><BR>4. Google won't say why they need this data: <BR>Inquiries to Google
about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28)
asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this
information, he had no comment. <BR><BR>5. Google hires spooks: <BR>Matt Cutts,
a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google
wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle
their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington. <BR><BR>6. Google's toolbar
is spyware: <BR>With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for
Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie
too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a
class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy
policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new
versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar
installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time
you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and
even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any
software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk. <BR><BR>7.
Google's cache copy is illegal: <BR>Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the
application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears
to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on
Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site.
Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted
questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem
pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for
webmasters, not "opt-out." <BR><BR>8. Google is not your friend: <BR>Young,
stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," so by
now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most
websites. No webmaster can avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming
he wants to increase traffic to his site. If he tries to take advantage of some
of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself
penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed,
published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for
penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't
even answer email from webmasters. <BR><BR>9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
<BR>With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google
amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned
data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick
efficiency that Google has already achieved. </DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
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