More privacy trouble for the Mountain View firm

Jun 11, 2007 13:11 GMT  ·  By

Privacy International released a special report to analyze the privacy aspects of numerous Internet companies, including Google and Microsoft. The London-based organization sustained that Google is the firm that has the most important problems with the privacy of its products in comparison with Yahoo and Microsoft that were obviously better than the search giant. Among the reasons for placing Google on the last position, Privacy International sustained that the Mountain View company is not doing too much to improve the privacy of the users and is keeping customers information even after they removed it from Google services. As an example, the organization offers the social product Orkut, adding that registered members' details are stored on the servers even if they deleted the accounts.

"Google fails to give users access to log information generated through their interaction with Google Maps, Google Video, Google Talk, Google Reader, Blogger and other services. Google logs search queries in a manner that makes them personally identifiable but fails to provide users with the ability to edit or otherwise expunge records of their previous searches. Google collects all search results entered through Google Toolbar and identifies all Google Toolbar users with a unique cookie that allows Google to track the user's web movement. Google does not indicate how long the information collected through Google Toolbar is retained, nor does it offer users a data expungement option in connection with the service," the organization described the main reasons for the Google position.

However, Google is working on the privacy and this is sustained especially by the recent announcement concerning the logs stored on the servers. According to the Mountain View company, Google wants to replace certain strings from the logs and let the users become anonymous after a specific period of time since the search query was conducted.