Search engines have become the go to place when it comes to looking up information. No matter if one prefers Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anything else, search engines are the way to go for finding any and everything. Even though there are many search engines out there, Google still remains at the number one spot. We as a society Google everything; recipes, directions, things pertaining to out personally lives, everything. A lot of our personal information is out there on the web because of the search engines, social media websites, and other websites we use. Google takes our personal information which is out floating around somewhere in cyberspace and uses it in the results it gives use. While Google believe this is a good approach, it isn’t. Tailoring search results is a bad idea because the information used to do the tailoring and how the information is obtained may compromise the privacy of internet users.
Google draws information from social network accounts, the websites we do online shopping, and from many other sources. Even though search engines urge that whatever information we enter about ourselves stays with the search engine, this day in age it is very easy for an individual to gain access to another person’s information. Sometimes “it is not clear that most people have voluntarily consented to having information about them placed in databases or in online forums that are accessible to search engines” (Tavani 2014). We become ““targets,” of queries by search engine users” (Tavani 2014). Other search engine users can easily find information about another individual which can lead to issues like cyberbullying, cyber stalking, and identity theft because one’s social security is available to users. A lot of people do online...
... middle of paper ...
...tion about users to tailor search results. Sometimes this is information about users that they don’t want to be known and information that they didn’t voluntarily put up. That’s a clear violation of internet user’s privacy. This information that Google is saving to its database can easily be found by those who have a malicious intent which is a huge red flag. And Google reading Gmail users emails for tailoring search results is the biggest violation of internet user’s privacy. Many internet users aren’t aware that their privacy is at risk. Google has only told users that they tailor search results through information found on social media, the websites we do our shopping on, and other sources. Because Google has failed to tell people the consequences associated with tailoring search results and they are not providing the best user experience which they lay claim to.
Did you know that almost everything you do on the internet is being tracked and recorded in some way? In the Article, George Orwell… Meet Mark Zuckerberg, by Lori Andrews, Andrews talks about how behavioral advertising, which is the tracking of consumer’s online activities in order to bring custom-made advertisements, is a topic that is concealed to many people and can cause damage. Search engines like Google store the searches you have made and in 2006 there were search logs released which had personal information that people were judged by (Andrews 716-717). Data aggregation is the main way Facebook makes its money. Andrews believes that it’s an invasion of privacy and is not known well enough by the public. This article is aimed at young and new internet users that are ignorant of the possible dangers on the web. Lori Andrews is successful at informing novice users about the dangers of behavioral
Andrea Schlesinger’s, “In Google We Trust” a chapter in her book The Death of Why? The issue is that the internet has changed people and that it may not be a good thing. Google has changed the way that people think greatly, especially in our ability to analyze, understand and know the source of the information we receive from google.
In the Engineering and Technology Journal, two engineers, Gareth Mitchell and Guy Clapperton, gave their thoughts on both sides of the privacy issue. Is gathering information violating personal privacy? They made their arguments using currency as a metaphor for personal information and online services a product. Mitchell argues the case that giving out personal information is “too high a price to pay” (Mitchell, 2013, p. 26). He says that despite the option to opt out of cookies and certain information, many sites are more covert and make their opt out option less accessible than a pop up asking to opt out. The site makes it hard for the Internet user to say no to being tracked. Mitchell warns the reader to take more consideration into what information they are giving away and that “privacy is not to be taken for granted” (Mitchell, 2013, p. 26). Getting information from the Internet would mean tra...
The personal connection Americans have with their phones, tablets, and computers; and the rising popularity of online shopping and social websites due to the massive influence the social media has on Americans, it is clear why this generation is called the Information Age, also known as Digital Age. With the Internet being a huge part of our lives, more and more personal data is being made available, because of our ever-increasing dependence and use of the Internet on our phones, tablets, and computers. Some corporations such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook; governments, and other third parties have been tracking our internet use and acquiring data in order to provide personalized services and advertisements for consumers. Many American such as Nicholas Carr who wrote the article “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty, With Real Dangers,” Anil Dagar who wrote the article “Internet, Economy and Privacy,” and Grace Nasri who wrote the article “Why Consumers are Increasingly Willing to Trade Data for Personalization,” believe that the continuing loss of personal privacy may lead us as a society to devalue the concept of privacy and see privacy as outdated and unimportant. Privacy is dead and corporations, governments, and third parties murdered it for their personal gain not for the interest of the public as they claim. There are more disadvantages than advantages on letting corporations, governments, and third parties track and acquire data to personalized services and advertisements for us.
In the article: “We Want Privacy, but Can’t Stop Sharing” by Kate Murphy, it is presented that in order for an individual to have privacy in an online environment, one should consider not disclosing sensitive information about one’s true self online. It is mentioned that, indeed, there is no privacy when connecting to the World Wide Web. She shows us that googles ads and nude pics of Jennifer Lawrence being hacked, makes us all vulnerable and a possible target according of “cybersnooping”. She references the film, “Minority Report” to show us that, spying is mismatched with a free society. Murphy, remarks that it is difficult to contend for privacy when society keenly reveals personal information online via social media. But most importantly, when revealing information about one self, there is a notion that one is being watched or tracked via social media implying that one’s health is a affected when releasing sensitive information online causing low
When google gives your information to advertising companies so they can target your interests by using keywords found in you emails, that is not ok. With all the advances in technology, you won't make it far in the world without relying on technology. The increase in efficiency is so much greater using modern technology like the phone and laptop, even using online services like google docs, that if you are still using a pen and paper you are less valuable to your boss and the loss of privacy is a small price you will have to pay to be
This report will describe the history of government regulations and FTC. How that applied to Google search and personal privacy. The changes made from the settlement between Google and the FTC, the difference Google's practices and policies from before the settlement and after the settlement, and the current demands and expectations from current and vocal Google users. The report will also draw a conclusion from the findings and will determine if additional regulations are needed or if the regulations currently in place are sufficient.
In his book Holtzman discusses how new technology threatens our privacy and how the law is incapable of protecting us. Holtzman has received a B.S. in Computer Science (326). He has worked as a security advisor in several organizations (326). By restating the title of the book in the introduction Holtzman claims that having no control over our personal information has resulted in the loss of privacy (xix). As Senator Evan Bayh mentioned in the foreword, the book examines the thin border “between protecting the United States and protecting our civil rights” (vi). Altogether, the main point of Privacy Lost is to deliver the message that “you have the right to control information about yourself” (xxv).
Perhaps the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said it best when he claimed that privacy is no longer a “social norm.” Virtually everyone has a smart phone and everyone has social media. We continue to disclose private information willingly and the private information we’re not disclosing willingly is being extracted from our accounts anyway. Technology certainly makes these things possible. However, there is an urgent need to make laws and regulations to protect against the stuff we’re not personally disclosing. It’s unsettling to think we are living in 1984 in the 21st century.
User Privacy is a sensitive topic at the moment. It is one of the most important factors a person should consider before they give their information away over the internet. Every click or selection you make online is being stored and permanently kept on record that includes anything you may have Googled, investigated or researched. Some people believe that user privacy is dead (Rambam 2011). More and more we are being encouraged to give away more information about ourselves online, and the greatest intrusion into our online activities comes from social networking sites. The lack of user privacy on social networking sites has led to dramatic changes in people’s lives such as targeting by the media and marketing researchers, the buying and selling of user information and other unethical forms of privacy invasion. Online activity is increasingly being used as e...
In this new era of the Internet, most people use the Internet to acquire information of one kind or other. But what these people are not aware of is that the Internet is collecting information about them. Every time we get onto the Internet there might be a compromise of privacy of our personal information. The information flows both ways. With every clock of the mouse on a hyperlink, or an addition to the mailing list, someone out there might be gathering information about us. This raises the seriousness of privacy of our information on the Internet.
Search engines, specifically Google, have probably contributed more to the distribution of knowledge than any other invention since the creation of the printing press. Google was created by Larry Page and Serge...
Buncombe, Andrew. “Google resists demand to hand over search records.” 15 March 2006. The Independent.
Search engines are not very complex in the way that they work. Each search engine sends out spiders to bots into web space going from link to link identifying all pages that it can. After the spiders get to a web page they generally index all the words on that page that are publicly available pages at the site. They then store this information into their databases and when you run a search it matches they key words you searched with the words on the page that the spider indexed. However when you are searching the web using a search engine, you are not searching the entire web as it is presently. You are looking at what the spiders indexed in the past.
When it comes to social media, I found this information that explains it well. (Endangering their right to privacy 2010) states “Communications and personal information that are posted online are usually accessible to a vast number of people. Yet when personal data exist online, they may be searched, reproduced and mined by advertisers, merchants, service providers or even stalkers. Many users know what may happen to their information, while at the same time they act as though their data is private or intimate. They expect their privacy will not be infringed while they willingly share personal information with the world via social network sites, blogs, and in online communities.” Unfortunately, people should expect that social media is not private and should not share anything they consider private on these shared networks, as they are exactly that, shared.