Archives for Google

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/8/12

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

It seems as if lots of the media as well as lots of politicians are upset over the privacy policies of Google, Facebook, and other commercial web companies, and with good reason. But users have a choice about what company’s services to use. There is no choice about government so it behooves us to keep up on current and future government use of technologies
that affect out personal privacy that most politicians don’t seem to want to talk about. Here are a few.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/15/10

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Google has as its mission to organize the world’s information. Pretty cool, eh? Included in the world’s information, of course, is information about you and me – what we search for, who we talk with, what maps we want to look at, who we correspond with, who we donate to, and on and on. Hmmm. Maybe not so cool if all that information is gathered in one place for advertisers and government agents to pick through. What do you think.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 1/14/10

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
Goggle recently announced that it is now “personalizing” the search results it delivers to users. Is this a good idea? Could it follow in the footsteps of cable and the Internet and simply contribute to the fragmentation of our culture? See what you think.
And, on another note, are the full body scanners about to be deployed in airports incapable of storing the nude images they generate of passengers as former Homeland Security Secretary asserted in a recent op-ed piece?
Apparently not. Ooops.
For more information on Google personalization:
searchengineland.com/googles-personalized-results-the-new-normal-3129
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searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results
-31195
To disable Google personalization:
www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
For more information on full body scanner image storage capabilities:
epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/

Goggle recently announced that it is now “personalizing” the search results it delivers to users. Is this a good idea? Could it follow in the footsteps of cable and the Internet and simply contribute to the fragmentation of our culture? See what you think.
And, on another note, are the full body scanners about to be deployed in airports incapable of storing the nude images they generate of passengers as former Homeland Security Secretary asserted in a recent op-ed piece?Apparently not. Ooops.
For more information on Google personalization:
searchengineland.com/googles-personalized-results-the-new-normal-31290http://searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results-31195
To disable Google personalization:www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
For more information on full body scanner image storage capabilities:epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/

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