Google runs some of the most mature and sophisticated web applications currently available and their development has given back excellent technology to the wider development community. It would seem, as a technology company, Google is more than willing to share the very things that many technology companies consider their core business. That’s because, for Google, technology is only a platform for aggregating data and extrapolating relationships. The value is in the rich data analysis layer that exists beneath all of Googles products. Many people are up in arms about the ownership clauses that grant Google a perpetual licence to anything users create through the browser, but the real cause of that clause is so that Google can use all of the tools people use to harvest any data they can about individuals.
Using statistical, linguistic and contextual analysis they learn about how you live, what you do and most importantly what you are going to do. This intelligence can track your searches, your purchases, your responsiveness to advertisement, the news you read, the places you go and anything available about you on the internet. Now add to that the documents you write, the emails you send, the pages you surf to, the posts you make, the forms you submit, any feed or service you use and almost every piece of text you type.
Through the desire to learn about a user for perfectly legitimate purposes, a well of information has been created which constitutes a pervasive invasion of privacy. With a pool of information like that, it’s only a matter of time before its application moves beyond predictive contextual advertising to more invasive applications.
We just read this about the Google Chrome EULA. It seems Google may claim strong rights to everything you create through or with its browser.
I’m not sure the law has really caught up with the Internet yet. How could Google enforce this? When would it? Would courts go along for the ride? Are browsers and other free products of this kind a type of “public accommodation” or other necessity of life in the 21st century that might remove them from typical User Agreement legal territory?
We’re seeing EULAs and territorial claims like Chrome’s more and more often. There are lots of companies with strong User Agreements that either give enormous rights to the companies themselves or deny rights to the users or otherwise require or forbid certain behaviors from their users. I’d guess that most of the most famous companies on the web have some kind of user-connected provision or another that might fall into one of these categories.
What the companies end up doing with these provisions is another matter. Often they don’t do much to enforce, at least to date. But it’s hard to tell which is, well, more Orwellian: the fact that these provisions exist, or the fact that the companies’ behaviors are so radically different from the words that they mouth. It’s like the lawyers are charged with quietly making as much of a land-grab as possible while the companies go about their business without calling on the provisions to take any action. Law enforcement is finally starting to take notice. New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has investigated one company for allegedly failing to live up to its own statements about what user behavior is and isn’t tolerated on its website.
The law has yet to catch up with the web. We’ll keep watching. Meanwhile, we’ll keep watching your back. Out here on the Internet, everybody’s gotta have a personal posse for backup, in case the big boys start to abuse their EULAs.
Well, if you’re like some of the ReputationDefender crew you utilize multiple browsers to take advantage of new features and fun tech stuff. Today Google has thrown its hat into the browser ring, announcing their new web browser, Chrome.
The new Google browser is only in Beta at the moment, but as of Tuesday the 2nd of September it will be released in 100 countries. Unlike Google’s all-powerful, all-knowing algorithm, it’s also open-source.
News of the browser came out via comic, and it gives a lot of insight into what Google was thinking and wanted to achieve with a browser built from scratch.
Here’s a quick break down of features:
The browser incorporates a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8.
A team in Denmark built it from scratch and made it open-source so other browsers could include it. V8 was intended to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, given the ubiquity of that important component on the web today. According to the Google comic, they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means, “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” Chrome will have a task manager so you will be able to tell at a glance when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory and “plac[e] blame where blame belongs.”
Google Chrome uses special tabs.
Unlike the “traditional” tabs seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.
Google Chrome has auto-completion features.
Google rolls out something they call ’omnibox’, that offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular and more.
Speed Dial for the Web
The default homepage Chrome presents is a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one in the Opera browser. The page displays your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. On the your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs are displayed.
Added Privacy
Chrome has a privacy mode; according to Google you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” Safari offers this as Private Browsing, the latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate.
App Integration
Web apps are launchable in their own browser window without the address bar or toolbar. Mozilla has been working on a similar project they call Prism that is supposed to do similar things.
Smart Security
Chrome constantly downloads lists of harmful sites to help fight against malware and phishing attempts. Google says that whatever information runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed.
Could Google’s search dominance be bolstered by their innovative smart browser? Stay tuned for all the latest from the ReputationDefender Blog.
This could get interesting.
Ars Technica is reporting that a federal judge has ruled to allow social security numbers to be posted on public websites, citing the First Amendment and freedom of speech in the ruling.
This decision comes about as a result of privacy advocate Betty Ostergren’s efforts to keep Social Security numbers off of the web. Quoting from the page:
For several years, Virginia has been making the real estate records available for a nominal fee from a commonwealth website. Ostergren, wanting to give public officials a taste of their own medicine, began reproducing the records of legislators and court clerks—Social Security numbers and all—on her website.
[SNIP]
[The Virginia] legislature changed the law to prohibit private parties from distributing individuals’ Social Security numbers even if they are simply reposting the very same records available from the government’s own website. Ostergren viewed this last clause as censorship, and with the help of the Virginia ACLU, she sued to block its enforcement against her.
This ruling evinces the importance of privacy and free speech in current internet case law. As the courts continue to rule about what can be posted online (see, for example, Viacom v. Google), internet privacy concerns will continue to grow.
My recommendation? Be very careful of who you share your personal data with, and make sure you have a service that monitors where your data appears on the web. MyPrivacy scans the internet for you each month.
We’re a low key crew here at ReputationDefender. We don’t order fancy lunches. We wear a lot of company t-shirts around the office and our highly-caffeinated sodas are mostly the Costco variety. So you can imagine our surprise when our friends over at VentureBeat called to inquire about the funding that we took back in January from Maples Investment and others! Well, I guess it’s no longer much of a secret that we’ve really tapped into something important and worthy of attention from a group of smart investors. We’re delighted by the coverage from VentureBeat and are glad for the capital. We will continue to build the best reputation and privacy management tools for the web. Congratulations to our team and to our customers for this exciting step forward.
It’s not some industry secret that Google is the search engine to beat a formidable search engine. What began as a backrub has now morphed into a full-fledged powerhouse of search. But Silicon Valley can be somewhat of an insular place. Every day rumors fly about this start up, or that maverick VC or some crazy idea that is gonna change the whole game. But in the case of Google and market dominance, how much of it is just talk, and how much of it is real?
Turns out, it’s real.
The above image comes to us from the analysts over at Web-traffic research firm Hitwise. According to their numbers (and spiffy chart) Google claims 70.8 percent of all U.S. searches as of July. This is an up tick from the 60 percent share they held in July 2006.
Beyond the big data for the almighty G, things get a little depressing when we look at also-rans MSN Search and Live.com. In spite of the fact that their product has undergone continuous reworking over the past three years, Microsoft has steadily lost share as Google has grown voraciously. Think Bill Gates is trying to get the anti-trust guys that investigated him to turn their eyes on Mountain View?
The Denial of Service attack is an attack on a computer resource to render it unavailable to its intended users. Very often it is the work of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Recently ReputationDefender came across a news story where a man denied service to a would-be lover and was attacked, kind of a variation on the DoS attack.
It’s your typical boy-meets-girl-over-the-Internet-posing-as-a-woman-in-Second Life story, but with some zaniness thrown in for good measure. After meeting in first life (that is, real life), the 52-year-old male victim from Claymont, Delaware ended the relationship (virtual and otherwise). This apparently upset the real woman of the pair, but instead of resorting to the typical jaded Internet-lover tactics of weepy/angry blog posts and troll forum comments calling his manhood into question, she decided to get physical, and not in the Linda Ronstadt Olivia Newton John kind of way [Thanks Old Fox!].
In August the jilted woman allegedly drove to the victim’s workplace in Pennsylvania and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. When that initial attempt at reconciliation failed (we can’t understand why not), she returned undaunted two weeks later to track down the victim’s Delaware home address. Unfortunately for her, he had recently moved, so she did what any sane person would do: she posed as a postal worker and searched for four days until she found the new address.
A truly compassionate soul, the woman brought her dog Gogi along with her to Delaware and then cut and removed a screened window in order to enter her virtual ex’s apartment.
According to police, when our would-be beau arrived home on Thursday, August 21, he saw someone pointing an object at his chest that was projecting a laser beam. Recognizing that his apartment was not the location for an impromptu rave, he fled immediately and contacted the police.
Authorities soon arrived on the scene, only to discover that the dog Gogi had been bound with duct tape and put in the bathroom while the woman was nowhere to be found. In addition to the dog, she apparently left behind a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a Taser and a BB gun.
Maryland authorities identified her vehicle approximately an hour after the incident at a rest stop on I-95. After a brief struggle she was taken into custody and now faces charges of attempted kidnapping, burglary and aggravated menacing.
The conclusion is one that we’ve brought up before, but it bears repeating: be careful with what you do on the Internet. It is a very short leap for a determined individual to go from cyber stalking to real world stalking. Both are very hurtful, scary and illegal, but at least you can’t get tased over email.
ReputationDefender encourages parents to educate their children about online safety and their online reputation. Any readers have online teen safety tips? Let us know in the comments!
There is news on the web these days about a program senator John McCain is running whereby if you spam on his behalf you will be rewarded with gifts and prizes. From the politicalwire:
Sen. John McCain’s campaign is urging supporters to spam blogs and forums with official talking points, according to the Washington Post. If you do a good job, you can even win prizes.
“That, in essence, is the McCain campaign’s pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of ‘AstroTurf’ campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper.”
“People who sign up for McCain’s program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain’s webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express.”
While it is good to see the candidates reaching out and embracing the Internet as another tool to connect with voters, it is frustrating to see spam promoted so vigorously as a viable form of communication.
# 1. Rockin’ Freebird!
# 2. Rubbing cream on that thing I noticed last weekend. Doesn’t seem to be working.
# 3. Buying DC Universe Classics Wave 5 the Atom at Wal-Mart! Build-a-figure Metallo is complete!
# 4. Feeling trapped in this male body.
# 5. Jesus, I’m lonely.
# 6. D’oh! Accidentally trimmed my pickin’ nail.
# 7. Watching The Notebook again.
# 8. Quick! Does anyone know the age of consent in Kentucky?
# 9. Just came up with a new emoticon for sanguine [:<≠>
# 10. Thinking about maybe talking to someone.
We here at ReputationDefender are big fans of the New York Times and Freakonomics, so we were delighted that they linked to us in their recent story about couch surfing.
The article goes on to show how AirBed&Breakfast, a web 2.0 social network is allowing people to meet one another and stay in guest houses, rather than hotels.
We’ve covered a lot of interesting internet stories here at the ReputationDefender Blog. Any readers have a favorite web 2.0 URL that changed the way you live, connect, share and think? Let us know in the comments below.
ReputationDefender Blog recently posted about the cyber attacks that are taking place against websites associated with the former Russian republic of Georgia.
The interiors of the countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan have all been made curiously empty on the “map” function, erasing the whereabouts of towns, roads, cities, etc. This was not the case last week, and one can only assume that this move was done in response to the recent escalating conflicts in the region.
There has been recent news coverage of the conflict between Russia-backed South Ossetia and the government of Georgia. No, the estate of Ray Charles is not involved with the Kremlin. We’re talking the Black Sea here, people.
As if getting your city shelled with mortars and being under sniper fire were not bad enough, in the 21st century Information Age there is also a digital front to the fighting. Wired reports on the digital assault taking place:
The websites of Georgia’s government have been under denial-of-service attacks for weeks, with Russian hackers fingered as the culprits. Those online assaults have only intensified in recent days, as a shooting war between the two countries has broken out.
Galrahn at Information Dissimenation says that “Russia appears to have targeted the .ge domain for specific government websites, and are pounding the Georgian military networks, but other websites in Georgia in org, net, and other domains are still up, sporadically.” The Washington Post adds that “the Caucasus Network Tbilisi — key Georgian commercial Internet servers — remain under sustained attack from thousands of compromised PCs aimed at flooding the sites with so much junk Web traffic that they can no longer accommodate legitimate visitors.”
IntelFusion calls it a “full scale cyberwar being conducted by Russia against Georgia.” As always, however, its extremely difficult to sort out which hacks are being done with government involvement, which are being done with government wink-and-a-nod, and which have nothing to do with the government whatsoever.
One of Google’s more popular slogans is “Don’t be evil.” A new one may turn out to be “Complete privacy does not exist.” ReputationDefender Blog recently ran into this interesting story about digital privacy and Google Street View.
Pennsylvania residents Aaron and Christine Boring filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit against Google earlier this year because images of their home were published on the popular engine’s “Street View” mapping feature. Google has moved to dismiss, arguing that the couple:
live in a residential community in the twenty-first-century United States, where every step upon private property is not deemed by law to be an actionable trespass.
Google’s legal eagles go on to assert that
Today’s satellite-image technology means that even in today’s desert, complete privacy does not exist. In any event, Plaintiffs live far from the desert and are far from hermits.
The photos, such as they are, do not reveal much of the Boring home (no pun intended), and appear to be from the couple’s driveway, which is allegedly a private road in its own right. Google’s motion notes that the company intends to prove that there was no sign designating the road as private. True to their first motto, Google has removed its “Street View” photos of the Boring residence after the couple filed its lawsuit.
