Google Consolidates Privacy Policies Across Services 239
parallel_prankster writes "The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Google will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube, and other services; a radical shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices. The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes. The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users. 'If you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services,' Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product, and engineering, wrote in a blog post."
The angle of the Washington Post article is a bit negative; Google sees this as consolidating an absurd number of privacy policies for its various services into a single, unified document. Reader McGruber adds: "Donald E. Graham, the Washington Post's chairman and CEO, joined Facebook's Board of Directors in January 2009. Curiously, the Washington Post article neglects to disclose that."
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
I thought they did that regardless of you being signed in or not.. maybe that's the way they used to do it? with cookies, but perhaps that would have soon been illegal in some locales, whereas using your signed in information is not?
the question again is does the tracking end when you log out.
The privacy policy is pretty clear, I think. Yes they use cookies to track you even when you're not signed in, and they try to connect that with you when you do sign in. If you want to ensure Google never tracks you, you can opt out using their privacy tools. That will install a "do not track" cookie which will cause Google to discard all of that data, except where they aggregate it into statistics that are in no way connectable to you. Unfortunately, various actions can cause that "do not track" cookie to be lost, so if you want to be really sure install Google's "keep my opt outs" extension, which will ensure the cookie is always present.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
the question again is does the tracking end when you log out.
Yes, Google tracks you all over the place
But you can Opt-Out
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/intl/en/plugin/
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)