Google had nearly 60 privacy policies written for each of their services. But recently, they combined all of them into one and now, all of their services are covered by one single policy which is now easier to understand. But this policy have a slight problem. Nope, its a big problem. I just recognized the problem. In Google’s new privacy policy, it says :
We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
If you check the archived version of their privacy policy, you’ll see that they had it earlier. But, remember, earlier they had separate privacy policies for each and every service. The above statement will give Google the right to share our personal information with third-party companies. Earlier, this is the policy of their search engine. I don’t think you have to give much personal information to your search engine. But what if they put this policy to Gmail?
That’s right… With this new combined policy, they can share our personal details in services like Google Plus, Gmail, YouTube with a third-party company! Now that’s really scary! They are getting really evil like Facebook.
Google might have something to say about it if they had this policy from the start. So, we know what will happen to our data before we sign-up. But now, there are billions of people using Google services. When they opt in, Google promised never to read our data even by themselves.
Is Google reading my mail? No, but automatic scanning and filtering technology is at the heart of Gmail. Google does not share your email address, your messages, or any other personal information with advertisers.
But now they are changing it even without asking us? Now that’s really evil and its even against the law!
Now, EU have investigated this new policy and they say it’s against their law. Their laws protect the users. But Google is selling us! The EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said :
Nobody had been consulted, it is not in accordance with the law on transparency and it utilizes the data of private persons in order to hand it over to third parties, which is not what the users have agreed to.
Actually, I think Google should take this warning and re think. We trusted them to protect our data. Now they are trying to share them with an unknown person? At least tell us who’ll get our data? No! This is really evil and it must be stopped.
Its a good thing that EU spotted this. Why US didn’t spot it? They never think about people… That’s why… They think about protecting rich celebrities and big companies. That’s why they tried to bring the SOPA. If they tried to protect the user genuinely, then they must be the people who should go against Google in the first place. Now where are they? What do you say?
- Image by : Meneame comunicacions, sl
- Source : Reuters
