I’m sure you’ve heard about Google updating their privacy policy.  If you haven’t had a chance to research the issue, this post will provide some insight for you.

There’s been a lot of uproar about the changes, but from what I can determine, I don’t see anything that indicates that all the information that Google has about you is going public.

Get the news from the source.  Check out this Google page about the policy change.   According to Google, they aren’t going to be collecting more information, but they will combine information from one service to another, treating you as one user across all of their services.  And, your information will not be made public unless you want it to be, or in specific situations like Google’s need to cooperate with law enforcement.

I don’t think there is any need to panic about imminent disclosure of the searches you did last week.  But, the fact that Google is combining information from all services does bring up some issues I know I’m going to think about.

I’m already tired of Google’s attempts to “help” me.  If I’m logged in to Google, searches I do are completely distorted.  Today, for example, I did a search for “Esquimalt”, a city in British Columbia, Canada.  The results showed a client of mine dominating the home page for that search.

How they figured out that I was related to that particular client in Esquimalt is beyond me.  I don’t use GMail very much, and I don’t maintain a list of contacts there.  So, how did they do that?  Do they know that I have spent a fair amount of time lately on that website?  To me, it’s kinda creepy.

Over time, I’m going to spend more time figuring out what information Google is collecting and how I can ensure the privacy of that data.  I already change my location with Google on a regular basis.   I tell them I’m in Florida or California, never Georgia!

Here are some tools I’ll be looking into.

• Google’s Privacy Tools – One thing this change did was point out to me how much I don’t know about the information Google collects.  If you look at the Privacy Tools page, you’ll find all kinds of ways to opt out of having all kinds of information gathered that you didn’t even know was happening in the first place.  Does that make sense?
• Google Web History – If you’ve never been there, you surely need to stop by.  I wager you’ll be dumbfounded by looking back over every search you’ve ever done.  I turned my History off.  Wehn you log in to the History area, you’ll see a button called “Remove all Web History”.  If you click that and confirm that, yes, you really do want to delete the history, you’ll see that the history is gone, and that Web History is “paused”, meaning that new entries will not be made.
• Keep up with Google’s Dashboard – I didn’t really ever think about the fact that I had a Google Dashboard.  But, when you log in to it, you’ll see all of the places you go  that are controlled by Google, and all the information they have about you in those different places.

I’m not sure this is an exhaustive list, but I’ll be spending some time with the Privacy Tools for sure.  Turns out I can stop Google from personalizing my search results!  Eureka!!   And, there is an opt out for personalized ads, too.

How do you feel about the changes?  Will you be making any changes in how much information you’ll let Google gather on you?  Do you think this is no big deal?