Reply to: Delete Google history?

[Sysman]

Recording that you HAD an account is hardly unexpected. It could very easily cause all kinds of screwups - you could get emails to the old user.

They are probably going to want all sorts of personal details from you to restore an old account to guard against that. Think carefully before going down that route.

[Sysman]

I deleted my Google account, since I rarely used my Google email address; but when a minute later I tried to set up a new Google mail account with the same address, guess what "There is already a user with this address" ...

So much for deleting my details - I bet Google hasn't deleted anything behind the scenes, just made it inaccessible to me.

Google: Deleting

From the Canceling your Gmail address there:

I want to retrieve my deleted account

Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our backup systems for an additional period of time. If you delete your Gmail address but wish to have it back, we work to help you recover your deleted accounts whenever possible. However, within a few weeks' time, accounts are usually no longer retrievable. Note that a successful recovery will only recover the username associated with the account.

I wonder what Bing is like for searches.

I've noticed that Bing and other MS bots have started crawling my sites. I'm currently trying out DuckDuckGo, and apart from a bit of frustration looking for a product in a hurry yesterday, have been quite happy with the results so far.

[d000hg]

Recording that you HAD an account is hardly unexpected. It could very easily cause all kinds of screwups - you could get emails to the old user.

[OwlHoot]

I deleted my Google account, since I rarely used my Google email address; but when a minute later I tried to set up a new Google mail account with the same address, guess what "There is already a user with this address" ...

So much for deleting my details - I bet Google hasn't deleted anything behind the scenes, just made it inaccessible to me.

I wonder what Bing is like for searches.

[wim121]

Not sure about that. I think they collate older searches to keep the statistically relevant data only... apart from anything else the raw data is too unwieldy.

That is a reasonable thought, but google have more than enough data space to handle this.

Found a resource that lists googles privacy policy and saved searches:

By doing this, we hope to play a small part in maintaining the web as an information tool that is more useful for the masses, than it is for the elites. That’s why we and over 500 others nominated Google for a Big Brother award in 2003. The nine points we raised in connection with this nomination necessarily focused on privacy issues:

1. Google’s immortal cookie:
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.

2. Google records everything they can:
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.”

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won’t say why they need this data:
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.

5. Google hires spooks:
Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google’s toolbar is spyware:
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.

7. Google’s cache copy is illegal:
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.”

8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites.

Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google’s approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google’s semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their 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 Google doesn’t even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
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.

What concerns me is reading some things I wasnt fully aware of, such as, to what extent google rent server space to intelligence agencies for instance. Having google controlling classified data is a big worry:

Google is selling storage and data searching equipment to U.S. Intelligence agencies giving them the power to create internal searches of government data.

The CIA, FBI and National Security Agency have all reportedly banded together to create an internal government intranet – sharing data on a system called Intellipedia.

“Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge,” Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA, told the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday.



“They maintained it in a shared drive or a Word document, but we’re encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit.”

There are three levels of information available to users:

top secret
secret
sensitive but unclassified

According to numbers provided by the CIA, 37,000 accounts have been established providing access to 200,000 pages of information. Google supplies the software, hardware and tech support.

http://endthelie.com/books-and-readi...#axzz1nJu3P4ai

[Platypus]

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did

How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Interesting

[d000hg]

Get teenagers pregnant?

[doodab]

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did

How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Isn't this what sasguru does?

[doodab]

My IP address stays the same for months on end, across power cuts and switching off for an evening. Assuming everyone else is in the same boat, my address is unlikely to get reassigned to someone else during that sort of time frame.

One sure fire way of getting a new address is to use a different router. The new MAC address forces that.

I have a static IP address. It's been the same for about 7 years.

[Sysman]

Google can track you without needing cookies if they want to.

Panopticlick

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did

What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.

“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.”

How Companies Learn Your Secrets

[Sysman]

My IP only appears to change when my ADSL router restarts - I have to be on a whitelist for some servers I log in to, so the moment my IP changes I find out!

My IP address stays the same for months on end, across power cuts and switching off for an evening. Assuming everyone else is in the same boat, my address is unlikely to get reassigned to someone else during that sort of time frame.

One sure fire way of getting a new address is to use a different router. The new MAC address forces that.

[d000hg]

I use Firefox and block all cookies from www.Google.co.uk and youtube.com. Simples!

Google can track you without needing cookies if they want to.

Panopticlick

[petergriffin]

I use Firefox and block all cookies from www.Google.co.uk and youtube.com. Simples!

[d000hg]

IP addresses are stored with every search as well as bucket loads of other data. Every search whether signed in our not, ever performed on google is stored.

Not sure about that. I think they collate older searches to keep the statistically relevant data only... apart from anything else the raw data is too unwieldy.

Some dynamic ones dont change for days on end. My virgin one, changes every three days or so. When connecting to my VPN, it shows me which swedish datacentre Im connected to.

My IP only appears to change when my ADSL router restarts - I have to be on a whitelist for some servers I log in to, so the moment my IP changes I find out!

[doodab]

You laugh but I kept getting adverts for SAS. It was pissing me right off.