Can we trust Google?

In this day and age, privacy is quite essential when we browse the internet or check our email. But, do we have any privacy? Google is not only the leading search engine, but also the leader in privacy issues. Am pretty sure most people would not think of Google having a big privacy issue. I’ve explained below why our privacy is in risk when using anything from Google or even when visiting one of their sites.

Unique ID

Google’s cookies are like immortal, they will expire in 2038. When you first go to Google they give you one of their cookies and it acts like a unique ID. For all searches they record the unique cookie ID, your IP address, date and time, your search terms and your browser config. They can access these info anytime they want.

Google’s toolbar is Spyware

Google toolbar is a spyware. Uninstall it immediately! Their toolbar sends out info about all the pages you browse and it is stored under your unique ID. And it reads your cookie too (your passwords, user-names, etc. are stored in cookies). They also stated this in their privacy policy, but didn’t explain all the details and made it look normal.

And their toolbar updates automatically, where Microsoft’s and other ones ask if you would like to update.

Google web accelerator shares info

Google’s web accelerator (not so popular) shares your caches and cookies with other browsers, and they do it to make pages load faster.

Google’s cached-copy of sites is illegal

Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google’s cached-copy of sites appear to be illegal. Everything on your site gets cached! Put a “noarchive” meta on your site, but I don’t think it will prevent your site being cached by Google.

Gmail getting indexed

Each and every email you send and receive gets indexed. Google says that your email could help someone else. (I wouldn’t want my personal info to be on Google search results).

Google helping spammers?

Google helps spammers or they themselves are spamming. People claim that they have searched something on Google and later the content in their spam emails are relevant to what they have searched for earlier.

When New York Times asked Sergey Brin in 2002, that why Google needs these data and he had no comments. I would say use Google at your own risk!