Google Dashboard
It’s a sharp edge that Google travels. In the quest to make everything known to man available to all instantaneously, the questions of privacy and the amassing of personal data are regularly wielded against them. On the one hand, by knowing the members history, Google is able to identify what might interest those members. On the other hand, what they could do with that history is significant – and not necessarily in a good way.
Not surprisingly, the folks at Google understand and acknowledge the depth and breadth of information they have the capability of gathering. Their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, when actually read, make clear that it is deep and broad. This should give everyone pause to realize that whatever is typed may very well be stored (including chat transcripts). The implication of this I’ll leave to your imagination.
Google announced today another acknowledgement to this information privacy concern and it’s called Google Dashboard. Google Dashboard enables a user to manage (for the most part) their information contained in the 20+ Google applications including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Latitude (yikes, they’re everywhere!). The Dashboard is fairly intuitive (unlike some other Google applications) and gives access to a surprising amount of settings.
That said, don’t think that you can wipe your Google slate clean if you ever think you need to. A quick browse of the Privacy Policy for Gmail for example, explains that data is never removed from backup copies – even after you delete your account. This isn’t unique to Google: the same data persistence occurs anywhere where data is stored and subsequently backed up (and banks are required to maintain data for a looong time). Keep that in mind the next time you’re emailing your next fraud plan.
Google Dashboard can be accessed by logging into Google, selecting “My Account” from the top right corner and selecting “View data stored in this account” under Personal Settings.
I used to call this tip “Don’t SCI Corp”. I can’t remember from where I learned about SCI Corp but I do remember the impact it had on me. Hopefully they’ve mended their ways by the time you read this but, for now, if you type “funeral and cemetary services” into your favorite search (or “decisioning” as MS calls Bing) engine, you won’t see SCI Corp anywhere in the first three pages of results. This is true even though, if SCI’s marketing copy is to be believed, they are one of the largest providers of funeral and cemetary services in the US. If you go to www.sci-corp.com and take a peek at the source code for the site, you’ll notice the basics of search, much less any structure, is breathtakingly absent. Maybe they don’t want the home website to result as well as their individual locations or brands.
