wtf? google: LEAVE ME ALONE
I’ve always been a bit nervous about gmail. I know Yahoo’s no better, but gmail, as good as it is as a tool, seems to just watch over me a bit to much.
But I was signed in to my gmail account because I was doing something on a Writely doc (and needed to be signed in). I was doing some searches, as one is wont to do on the net. And I noticed this funny little link in the top right corner:
See that there? Top right? “Search History”? …So I clicked on it, and got this:
Which means not only does Google read my emails to serve me adds … when I am logged into gmail, they also track all my searches, and then can correlate my searches to my email address, to even better process who I am. Great eh?
Seems I cannot disable this though I have not looked very hard (UPDATE: yes you can, see here) and *worse* it seems to be a default function. When when when did I ask google, as part of my gmail service, to start tracking my searches? That’s just … wrong.
UPDATE:
see: UNEASYsilence!
see: Google Personalized Search Privacy Notice
see: Personalzied Search Privacy FAQ
Here’s the help page telling you how to turn it off.
Interestingly, it isn’t on for me.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=26687&topic=9007
Comment by Chris — November 16, 2006 @ 6:14 am
Yeah, I have as of late avoided gmail. I prefer using my own domain e-mail, regardless of how handy their services may be. I cringed when signing up for a google docs account, but I think I’ll be alright with that one.
Comment by Kri — November 16, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
yes. “first, do no evil” is starting to make me nervous. it’s a question of semantics : how do you define evil.
Comment by hugh — November 16, 2006 @ 1:05 pm