Google Watch & Scroogle: Do you know how much information Google is compiling on you?

Time to bring to your attention a website I found a few weeks ago. Its main purpose is to bring to the public information on Googles's monopolies, policies and data collection. While it may seem minor today within a decade or so google will have databases full of information on any i.p. address that uses it's services and this could have huge implications on civil liberties.

Now, while they have stood up to the US governments demands for access to this information so far, they have not been so dogmatic when it comes to the Chinese. In the case of China they have agreed to all the demands of the authorities so as to achieve their commercial goal of access to the Chinese market. A clear case of business interests before that of their users and possibly of decisions to come.

Even if they do keep this info away from prying governments, the data they have will be very useful, not just for Google but other commercial interests that may decide to take it if they wont hand it over.

Now you may be saying 'what's he on about? Don't this blog belong to google? And yes you would be right. So I have decided that for me the best form of defense is attack. How you may say? Well information is the best way to move forward. Learn where and when you are supplying data to Google.

The best place to find this out is Google-watch.org, and use Scroogle

Scroogle

Scroogle is a website and browser extension that basically hides your i.p. address, thus allowing you to use Google as a search engine but without Google recording your search data.


Call me a little paranoid, but if you where to look at my search engine results for the last year plus all the other data that google has collected on me, from clicking through on Google supplied ads and Googlemail, it could be interpreted in many ways depending on the persons political or commercial needs. Now while Google ain't doing anything wrong, at least lawfully, a lot of people who use it's services are not fully aware of the vast amounts of data being collected. While this may not be a problem now, it may become one in the future.

So head over to Google Watch and check out what you can do to keep your data away from prying eyes.

Word