Trust Google? Trust Facebook?
Google must think I’m a Nazi. It’s now offering tours of the
Fall of the Third Reich on my website. I suppose it’s because I mentioned
Germany in connection with my Mum.
Not sure I like web crawlers.
While it’s random and only in the interests of marketing, I
suppose it’s not too bad. They have to make money somehow as my resident Geeks
point out. It’s not a conspiracy. They have infinite faith in the web and say
be grateful that a lot of the searching is done for you, there’s just too much
information out there about everything.
There are other dangers however, when you are being typecast
by your searches. Listen to Eli Pariser tell you about them. I have just read his book “The Filter Bubble” and he has a lot more to
say about the loss of common ground as we are each offered our personal
tailored universes and little else. [TED has a number of other interesting free
lectures. Check them out for yourself].
Facebook is probably even worse when it comes to privacy. Just listen to their terms of service:
Facebook, not what you
think. PLEASE SEE THIS
Mark Zuckerberg was noticeably evasive on the subject during a recent TV interview.
I don’t use Facebook any more. I was going to try Scroogle as it crumbles your cookies, but apparently it’s really annoying when you try
to log on to your regular stuff.
Should we worry? I do think we should insist on having
disclosure as to who has access to our information as they do in Europe. At the moment, it can be passed on to anyone
and for any purpose. And should we be able to correct what is on our files? How
can we if we don’t know who has them and what for? What do you think?
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