The Anonymous
Bag On My Head
A federal judge is “disturbed” by Google’s so-called privacy practices after learning in court that the popular Chrome browser makes users’ information available to the company’s data-harvesting server even when users are browsing “incognito.”
The help page for Chrome’s incognito mode promises users that they can “browse in private” if they “don’t want Google Chrome to remember your activity.”
Google’s Chrome might not remember your activity locally, on your computer or on your smartphone, but it seems that Google’s servers remember everything.
San Jose-based U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh wants to know “about what exactly Google does” as she presides over a class-action suit seeking “$5,000 in damages for each of the millions of people whose privacy has been compromised since June of 2016.”
According to a Bloomberg report filed late last week, “Koh said she finds it ‘unusual’ that the company would make the ‘extra effort’ of data collection if it doesn’t use the information to build user profiles or targeted advertising.”
Unusual? Hoovering up data from any available source and without consent is just business as usual for the company whose corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.”
Google is the same company whose former CEO, Eric Schmidt, responded to privacy complaints about Google Maps cars photographing literally everything they drove past by saying, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-green/2021/03/01/you-didnt-think-googles-incognito-mode-really-protected-your-privacy-did-you-n1429202
The help page for Chrome’s incognito mode promises users that they can “browse in private” if they “don’t want Google Chrome to remember your activity.”
Google’s Chrome might not remember your activity locally, on your computer or on your smartphone, but it seems that Google’s servers remember everything.
San Jose-based U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh wants to know “about what exactly Google does” as she presides over a class-action suit seeking “$5,000 in damages for each of the millions of people whose privacy has been compromised since June of 2016.”
According to a Bloomberg report filed late last week, “Koh said she finds it ‘unusual’ that the company would make the ‘extra effort’ of data collection if it doesn’t use the information to build user profiles or targeted advertising.”
Unusual? Hoovering up data from any available source and without consent is just business as usual for the company whose corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.”
Google is the same company whose former CEO, Eric Schmidt, responded to privacy complaints about Google Maps cars photographing literally everything they drove past by saying, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-green/2021/03/01/you-didnt-think-googles-incognito-mode-really-protected-your-privacy-did-you-n1429202
