Privacy Concerns On Google's 30 Day Data Policy

darkmonkeh writes ""Google Inc. is offering a new tool that will automatically transfer information from one personal computer to another, but anyone wanting that convenience must authorize the Internet search leader to store the material for up to 30 days", CNN reports. Although Google's policy states that it can hold data for up to 30 days, "Google intends to delete the information shortly after the electronic handoff, and will never retain anything from a user's hard drive for more than 30 days", said Sundar Pichai, director of product management. With pressure on Google after the request by the Bush administration for personal information, privacy concerns may be hard hitting."

Re:advertising?

[kh+ln]

Does this give Google the right to search the data for advertising purposes?

According to the article on CNN.com:

Google plans to encrypt all data transferred from users' hard drives and restrict access to just a handful of its employees. The company says it won't peruse any of the transferred information.

So, I guess no, Google won't read what you wrote... unless, of course, the Chinese [boston.com] ask them.

Google file system

[_LORAX_]

If you read the white paper on how the google file system platform works, this makes perfect sense. The provision is a CYA to make sure that the customer knows that while google makes every attempt to remove the data quickly, the system only marks files for deletion. Files are later ACTUALLY deleted by an automated sweep.

http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs-sosp2003.pdf [google.com]

Indexing?

[Captain_Chaos]

Why can't the content be encrypted by the user via an asymmetric key scheme (like PGP) and decrypted again once it's reached the target system?

I imagine they want to index the information, which they wouldn't be able to do if it was encrypted.

Re:Safety

[arcdx]

Except, no, it's not at all using Google's storage to move/wipe a machine. TFA [cnn.com] is about a "software upgrade to Google Desktop" and the personal data that's referred to here is data *about* all of the files on your drive, not the files themselves. Plus, it also includes "documents, e-mails, instant messages and an assortment of other information," so you can see where there's privacy concerns. The idea is that you use Google Desktop Search to find these files, emails, IMs, etc on your machine.

But you might be at work, and it would be useful to be able to search your home machine to see if those things are there instead. Instead of a P2P connection between your computers, Google uses its servers to host the search data from each computer, allowing you to search that cache online and get your results.

Google keeping this cache online for up to 30 days after your last use. The privacy concern, obviously, is that this cache is going to have info about what files are on your PC plus it'll have text from your private emails, documents, and instant messages.

This has nothing to do with temporary storage of your data in order to move or wipe your machine.

-Steve