Thursday, November 12, 2009

Google Dashboard paints the story of your life as data points - The Boston Globe

Interesting times

Seeing all that I’ve shared with Google laid out on a single page got me thinking seriously about privacy for the first time in quite awhile. That’s the genius of Dashboard, and the creation of this tool gives me confidence Google respects my right to privacy. But what about everybody else? We pass around chunks of personal data to hundreds of other websites. Think about what Amazon.com knows about you, or Facebook, or even Boston.com. Then there are the Internet advertising networks that follow you as you browse from one site to another, tracking everything you read in an effort to send you the most enticing ads.

“I think if we could lay out everything we’ve disclosed online, we’d be stunned,’’ Conti said. And even if each individual site follows Google’s lead and creates its own Dashboard, nobody has the time or patience to scour them all.

Google Dashboard paints the story of your life as data points - The Boston Globe

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