Google Presents Letter To Congress Addressing Questions Of Its New Privacy Policy

You remember how Google recently announced it would consolidate its privacy policies into one policy, right? In case you’ve forgotten, this change will reflect all the information you search for, all the emails that are sent in Gmail, all the videos you watch or subscribe to in YouTube, places you’ve looked up on Google Maps or even posts and discussions on Google+– and will be sent and stored in one place. All of this is done to enhance users’ overall Google experience, but keep in mind users cannot opt-out of this new privacy policy. Once you have a Google account and use any of its services, you’re pretty much stuck with what you get. That’s why plenty of folks are coming up in arms and expressing their concerns regarding this imminent change.

That’s why Google took some time and addressed concerns to Congress in a detailed letter. Anyone who is concerned about their privacy will definitely want to set aside some time and check out this letter. This is a long letter, so here are some quick bullet points you might want to focus on:

We’re still keeping your private information private — we’re not changing the visibility of any information you have stored with Google.We’re still allowing you to do searches, watch videos on YouTube, get driving directions on Google Maps, and perform other tasks without signing into a Google Account.We’re still offering you choice and control through privacy tools like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager that help you understand and manage your data.We still won’t sell your personal information to advertisers.We’re still offering data liberation if you’d prefer to close your Google Account and take your data elsewhere.

Kudos to Google for taking immediate action in addressing its users’ concerns. Be sure to make some free time and check out the video below in addition to checking out Google’s letter in its entirety at the link below.

  

source: Droid Life
via: Google

» See more articles by Roy Alugbue

Categorized as Android Applications, Android Lawsuits, Android News, Google News

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What Google’s unified Privacy Policy means for Android

This week Google announced an upcoming change to their privacy policies that aims to provide a more intuitive user experience across all their products. Starting March 1, Google plans to consolidate more than 60 privacy documents into a single new Privacy Policy.

Now when signed in, Google will treat you as a single user across all their products, combining information you provided from one service with the others. As Danny Sullivan of Marketing Land puts it, “It’s similar to how you sign-up for Facebook, rather than individual products within Facebook.”

In short, Google will know more about who you are and what you do online. So far, it appears people are reacting to the changes in two ways. Either people are creeped out by all the information Google is collecting or they are embracing the universal data policies that will enable more human-centric interactions with their connected devices.

A preview document of the new Privacy Policy provides some insight on what information is collected and how it will be used. I encourage you to go read the entire document, but here are a few snippets we think are related to Android.

Device information: We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.Log information: Telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.Location information: When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example, provide information on nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.Local storage: We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.

I’ll agree that the level of data that Google has access to is a little alarming, but consider some of the proposed benefits that we could experience. Google lists several examples on their site and in a new promotion video that explains the changes.

There’s so much more that Google can do to help you by sharing more of your information with … well, you. We can make search better—figuring out what you really mean when you type in Apple, Jaguar or Pink. We can provide more relevant ads too. For example, it’s January, but maybe you’re not a gym person, so fitness ads aren’t that useful to you. We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before.Alma WhittenDirector of Privacy, Google

The way I see it, this information sharing could be laying the groundwork for Google’s upcoming voice and artificial intelligence application, codenamed Majel. Not everyone is ready for this Star Trek future where they talk to their personal computer that knows everything about them, but it’s clearly the path Google is on.

Some have proclaimed that this shift marks The End of “Don’t Be Evil”, but I’ll leave that up to you for debate. There are definitely signs that Google is in bed with our government, so I see how individual liberty could be constrained in the event of some national emergency that requires pervasive surveillance. (Call me crazy but fictional stories like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Terminator’s Skynet come to mind.)

For the time being, I don’t see any reason to distrust Google, and I, for one, welcome this universal data sharing strategy. Just remember you can always access your Google Accounts Dashboard to see which personal information is being stored and you can edit your Ads Preferences to alter which ads Google serves you.

What do you think of Google’s new Privacy Policy? Do you think the changes are good for innovation or is Google becoming evil?

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