Google dashboard

Google has an ad in today's New York Times. Over a half page (and with lots of white space), it is a cartoon of a guy up to his waist in water calling a plumber. The plumber who answers says: "I'm on my way. See you in 15 hours." The rest of the text goes:

"You live in Peoria. Do you really need a plumber from New York? We didn't think so.... That's why search engines, including Google, give you results based on your city or region. They can do this by using your computer's IP address. It's a number like 209.85.229.147, which acts like a zip code to tell them the rough area your computer is in.

To find out more about how websites get to know you better go to google.com/goodtoknow"

The text vs. subtext in this ad is stunning. Although justifying a Google practice, it speaks of it in the third person: "they" use your IP address, it tells "them" the area your computer is in. The message is: everyone does it. It's not a Google thing, it's an Internet thing. Don't blame us.

The site at "goodtoknow" uses the same cartoon figures and has very little text; most information is given via videos. The site is a fairly good round-up of information topics, from phishing to securing your home wifi network. (The irony of that being that Google was caught picking up open wifi traffic in Germany.) I could imagine it as a "go-to" place for novices needing information on online privacy. Much of it isn't about Google at all: the video on "Stay safe online" gives five rules about passwords and avoiding phishing and never mentions Google. It also doesn't mention that when you log into a site with a secure password, everything you do is observable by the owner of the site. Believe it or not, many people do not understand that. They think that the password makes their activities private, even to the site owner.

The page on "Manage your information" includes a link to Google Dashboard, which was also mentioned in one of the videos, and which, if I'd known about I had forgotten. Google Dashboard is a list of some of the things that Google knows about you, in particular which Google services you have accounts on. It shows your settings on these services. I found some services I had played with and forgotten about, which I can now delete.

Of course, Dashboard is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Google knows about us. I turned off Web history in 2007 so I don't see my searches there. If you are at all concerned about privacy, visit Dashboard and make some adjustments. Google warns you that you will get results that are less customized for your interests. However, if you are reading this you probably are an information professional, and my guess is that you can find the ad for that printer just as well searching privately (if real privacy really exists) without also letting Google know your political, sexual and religious interests.

You often hear that people don't really care about their privacy and they are quite happy to give Web sites their information in exchange for services. I also observe that behavior, but I'm not convinced that the majority of Web users are truly aware of how much information about them is being gathered. I also doubt that most users know how to take advantage of things like the private browsing options in browsers. (I'm not sure I trust that private browsing is truly private. I also don't know how to find out how private it really is.) I do find myself giving out information about myself to Web sites, but it's not because I don't care: it's because I get rushed and don't want to take the extra step, or I forget, or I'm not given a choice and I need to access that site right now. I don't believe in blaming users for the lack of privacy, because the privacy options are always opt-out, not opt-in, and are often hard to find.

And, yes, I know I am writing this on a Google-owned blog site. I've had on my task list for a very, very long time to figure out a way to port this content over to my own web site. It's not so much for privacy purposes (it'll still be a public blog) but because I want the content to be mine even though I'm more likely to lose it than Google is.  The Web has become my workplace and the choice I make is not privacy vs. better ads but privacy vs. getting my work done.  Making it all about advertising trivializes the reality that our personal and professional lives are intertwined with systems we have no control over. This dependency is as frightening as the privacy issue.

Learning not to share

"Learning to share" used to be one of the basic lessons of childhood, with parents beaming the first time their offspring spontaneously handed half of a cookie to a playmate. But some time before that same child first puts fingers to keyboard she will have to learn a new lesson: not to share online.

The Facebook phenomenon has taken that simple concept of sharing with others to an industrial level. Any page you go to on the Web today connects into your online social life, so that while reading the news or watching a video you are exhorted to share your activity with your online "friends." I say "friends" in quotes because the way that Facebook involvement grows means that many of the people seeing your posts or learning about your activities are like second and third cousins; related to your friends but at least a step removed from the inner circle you relate to. It is easy to forget that those more distant relations are there, but bit by bit the links pull in more invitations and, since we have been told that it is impolite not to share, we rarely slam the digital door on those seeking our friendship.

To increase this digital sharing, the House has passed a revision to the Video Privacy Act. You may not recall the "Bork law" of 1988. It was one of the fastest privacy laws ever passed in the U.S. legislature. Here's the description from the New York Times article:

In 1987, the Washington City Paper, a weekly newspaper, published the video rental records of Judge Robert H. Bork, who at the time was a nominee to the Supreme Court. One of the paper’s reporters had obtained the records from Potomac Video, a local rental store. Judge Bork’s choice of movies — he rented a number of classic feature films starring Cary Grant — may have seemed innocuous.

But the disclosure of Judge Bork’s cultural consumption so alarmed Congress that it quickly passed a law giving individuals the power to consent to have their records shared. The statute, nicknamed the “Bork law,” also made video services companies liable for damages if they divulged consumers’ records outside the course of ordinary business.

 At the time the passage of the law had a comic aspect to it: you could imagine the thoughts going through the heads of members of Congress when they realized that any reporter could talk into their local video store and learn what they had rented. Zingo! New law!

The revised bill, stated in the article as being backed primarily by Netflix, would allow consumers (and that's all we are, right, consumers?) to sign a blanket waiver on their video privacy in order to facilitate sharing with friends.

The Times article has various quotes giving pros and cons, online services vs. privacy advocates, all talking about how much you do or don't want your "friends" to know about you. What the article fails to state, however, is that whether you like it or not, every site where you share is a de facto friend as well. If your Facebook friends get your Netflix picks, both Facebook and Netflix (and their advertising partners) also get your video viewing information. The more you share with your friends, the more you are sharing with an invisible network of corporations - who, by the way, you cannot "unfriend" even if you want to.

This is why we need to learn not to share: it's a lie, a deceit. We aren't really sharing with our friends, our friends are being used to get us to divulge information to faceless corporations who have insinuated themselves into our lives for the sole purpose of benefiting from our consumption. They have distorted the entire idea of "friend," and turned it into a buyer's club for their benefit.

Dear friends: I'm looking forward to seeing you ... offline.