‘Government intrusions instead of accidental public disclosures of data are the greatest threat to online privacy,’ says Google, the leading web search, which piles up a large amount of data on the Web surfing habits of its users. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google revealed the Search Engine Strategies industry conference that they had ushered in all essential protections in place to safeguard its users’ personal data from accidental release or theft.
He further revealed about last weekend’s discovery by online privacy sleuths that a key Google search customer called AOL, the online unit of media conglomerate Time Warner, had by mistake introduced personally data on 20 million keyword searches by its users, which is identifiable. However, the most sensitive threat to user privacy is laying in increasing demands on Google made by governments to let the firm desist from data on its customer’s surfing habits.
Schmidt said,
You can never say never.” “The more interesting question is not an accidental error but something where a government, not just the U.S. government but maybe a non-U.S. government would try to get in [Google’s computer systems].
Google is not only one of the global operators of the largest collections of computer databases at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters that gets permissions from its users to store personal data, used by it to speed Web searches to facilitate advertisers target ads, but it also manages computer data centers in other countries, comprising China, where it had to face controversy over the dangers of doing business under China’s censorship laws.
On Monday, AOL apologized by saying that it had begun an in-house investigation into how the company’s research division erroneously introduced the data on its Web site two weeks ago. The trove of personal data keeps on circulating on the Web, where it is downloadable and worth probing for details on user interests.
For a three-month period, discharge of the data on searches by approximately 658,000 anonymous AOL users has aggravated a hellhole of criticism over the dangers brought about by amassing immeasurable stores of personal data as loads of online firms do, comprising Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon.com.
Whether the names of users are not attached to the data, they can be identified by the personal nature of numerous Web searches.
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