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Privacy And Google : Points Of View And Problematics

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Privacy and Google: Points of View and Problematics Imagine a world with no privacy: everything you do on and offline is documented and vaulted away until an inevitable use is found for this seemingly innocuous information. The route you took to work, the breakfast you ordered at McDonald’s, the vacation you have planned for next month---all are trivial things that could be recorded and added into your individual case history, collected by a third party and used for various other purposes. As far-fetched as this may seem, this imaginary world is slowly becoming a reality. Former CIA agent Edward Snowden, regarded as a traitor by some, and a hero by others, made it his mission to do something about this direction our society is heading …show more content…

It is true that the Snowden leaks are an extreme example of diminished public privacy over a much larger scale, but when large internet conglomerates are the subject, the same questions of privacy are still very much applicable. For example, companies like Google, whose services are so widespread across the internet, will collect user data and sell it to third-party advertising companies to make money from what they are hoping you will click on. Where the NSA has no Terms of Service policy for a person to opt-in or -out of, by law, Google needs to have one. However, there is still very much of a gray-area pertaining to what we as users are aware and unaware of how Google is using our own personal information for their benefit. It is important to decide what you believe is important regarding privacy; everyone has their own individual definition of the word. However it should be assumed that not many people would enjoy having their personal information tossed around on the internet, not knowing exactly what is being done with it other than for the purpose of a profit. Although Google seems to have clearly written Terms of Service and privacy policies, their users are largely unaware of how their privacy is being compromised every time any of Google’s services are being used. The definition of data mining is seemingly a harmless one: it is essentially the gathering of data from different perspectives and gathering it into functional purposes. Similar to coal or oil

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