"The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."
"There’s no bad data, only bad uses of data."
- Big Data and a Renewed Debate Over Privacy (via infoneer-pulse)
(via roomthily)
"It’s Google, the social also-ran, that knows your real secrets. It knows the things you wouldn’t ask your friends. It knows things you can’t ask your spouse. It knows the things you haven’t asked your doctor yet. It knows things that you can’t ask anyone else and that might not have been asked at all before Google existed. Google’s servers are a repository of the developed world’s darkest and most heartbreaking secrets, a vast closet lined with millions of digital skeletons that, should they escape, would spare nobody."
- Why Google, Not Facebook, Knows Your Darkest Secrets - BuzzFeed Mobile (via futuristgerd)
Privacy Concerns Remain for Location-Based Service Users
Tellingly, almost one-quarter of respondents said their greatest privacy concern was having their information used for marketing purposes.
"The real problem that Honan has with Google isn’t that it has started to do stuff that bothers its users. It’s that Google has started to do stuff that bothers users in a way we aren’t used to—in a way that Don’t Be Evil falsely suggested it was above doing. By never claiming to be above evil, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon are free to act like normal companies whose efforts to optimize their own self-interest don’t arouse much suspicion."
"We are becoming helpless collateral casualties in the war between Google and Facebook."
- John Perry Barlow, Co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation | Google’s Social Move Attracts Critics
Attract Government Spies By Tweeting These Words
“The privacy advocates at Electronic Privacy Information Center said [the Department of Homeland Security] is monitoring social networks, blogs and message boards for users saying terms like “human to animal,” “collapse,” “infection,” “outbreak,” and “illegal immigrants.” If you use these words and phrases, the government might follow you, record your activity, and share information about you with local, state, federal, and foreign governments.”
How to Use Facebook’s New Timeline Feature (and Hide Your Embarrassing Old Posts)
New to me:
- The other new feature you’ll want to try is starring a post. If there’s a post you or someone else has made that you want to draw more attention to on your timeline, just hover over it and click the star button.
- If you have any old posts that are public or shared with friends of friends, you can change the privacy of all those posts to “Friends Only” with one click. It won’t hide those posts from your friends, but it will at least keep everyone else on Facebook from being able to browse every post you’ve ever made public.
