Well I just finished reading a blog post on Mashable.com titled "Is Google Watching You". I thought this was a pretty interesting article and it made me think of the movie Enemy of the State with Will Smith. However, back to the story at hand, there is a new plug-in that was developed by a couple of individuals (not too fond of Google by the way), that will alert individuals when their personal information is being transmitted across the internet back to Google servers.
The name of the browser plug-in is called Google Alarm. The individuals who came up with the concept for this plug-in hypothesized that Google was collecting information from users on the internet without the users’ knowledge or permission. After research and product development, turns out these individuals came up with more than just a hunch. One of the users indicated that over 80% of the sites he visited had some type of Google bug tracking his internet usage.
With so much personal information being posted online and the emergence of social geolocation sharing media (ex. Gowalla) it makes me feel that there needs to be some type of limits in place to what people can share and what is allowed online. From this blog post and the information that was discovered I have to say that I’m not completely surprised. I am sure that most people would not be surprised to find out that companies are tracking your web purchases, and browsing history. As a consumer it just would be nice to know how they’re doing it and how often.
Justin Blair
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