Google doing something right?

I came across this article this morning and I wound it interesting.

www.cnn.com...

The article talks about the 'alarming' rise of government censorship requests. It is disturbing that western governments are stepping up the 'need' to request censorship of links on google. I was happy to see that some of the requests were denied. This makes me wonder what the accepted requests were.

reply to post by Opfor


Well if you can't censor the internet or put it under government control completely, this is the obvious next step.

don't count on it .. i used to trust google with their "do no evil" mantra .. but as they grew into a corporate power house they realized the value of your information.. they may be doing right by not taking down content ( which they have done .. ) they still share your information liberally and they try to glean as much of it as humanly possible .. your information is worth money and they absolutely sell it / market it .. it's what allows them to offer so much for so little..you basically sell yourself for using them..

With that said.. I use google for many things.. I use gmail, google drive, google search.. google calendar.. youtube.. but I'm always conscious about what I use it for .. and I'm aware of their retention policies.. deleting something doesn't mean it's gone.. in some cases they can keep your information after you delete it for well over a year.. usually just a few months.

Edit:

But keep in mind the others aren't much better.. facebook will keep a a photo you deleted for months after you delete it .. in some cases, years.. if someone kept a direct link they can get to it .. they've said they are working on it.

reply to post by Opfor


This is from earlier. Same article.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The thing to remember with the internet is any time you click submit.. regardless of where.. you're sending your IP address and the contents of your submission, along with your OS, browser version and other bits of information.. just submitting anything, anything at all .. shares some trackable information.. most ISP's don't offer you a new IP address very often.. even if you don't have a static ( permanent ) ip address you can sometimes have the same one for years.. that is your footprint .. along with cookies.. unless you're cleaning your cookies out regularly or surfing with tor or a vpn.. you're leaving your footprints all over ..

Soooo if you want to be truly safe.. don't use it .. or educate yourself =)

And no I'm not just some paranoid baldy .. I worked for an ISP for years.. I have aided in investigations ( usually hack attempts on websites we hosted ) or investigating illegal activity ( suspected or otherwise ) of our clients..

but then again under every little good there will be the possibility of 5 other evils to rise lol