Report: Google wins 'race to bottom' on privacy

Web search leader Google's commitment to consumer privacy has come under fire from Privacy International, a British activist group that has previously singled out Google for criticism.

The London-based group released a report on Saturday entitled "A Race to the Bottom--Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies" that rates Google, alone among 20 sites, as having an "entrenched hostility to privacy."

With each search on Google, the company gathers information about a customer's tastes, interests and beliefs that could potentially be used by third parties such as advertisers. But the company says it never passes on personal data.

While the preliminary report details a handful of specific concerns, the main threat Privacy International spells out is Google's growing size and scope as the world's largest provider of Web searches, along with the consumer data that the company collects as it delivers ever more personalized Web services.

"This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google's product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google's market dominance and the sheer size of its user base," the report finds.

The rankings were arrived at after a six-month probe of privacy practices at key Web search companies, e-mail providers, and e-commerce and social networking sites. Privacy International promised to issue a fuller report in September, after further consultation with the companies involved.

Google said the latest report was mistaken.

"We are disappointed with Privacy International's report which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services," Nicole Wong, associate general counsel at Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said in a statement.

"(Google) stand(s) by our record for protecting user privacy and offering products that are transparent about what information is collected and empower users to control their personal information," she said.

The substance of the accusations against Google are that the company's privacy policy disclosures are incomplete and "possibly deceptive" and that Google has a poor history of responding to consumer complaints. Also it occasionally does not accept public input before introducing services.

"Throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations," the report states.

"While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy," the report says in reference to Google.

But none of the score of sites studied gets a complete clean bill of health.

Facebook and Hi5, two social-networking Web sites, were rated as "substantial threats" to consumer privacy for alleged poor handling of consumer personal information.

Similarly low-rated are Apple and AOL, which are criticized for failing to do more, given their size.

Microsoft is criticized for "serious lapses," not so much for recent products as for its "terrible" prior track record.

Other Internet properties fare better as "generally privacy aware but in need of improvement." These include BBC.com, auction site eBay and online music site Last.fm, which is to be acquired by CBS.

In 2004, Privacy International called on European Union regulators to set limits on Google's free e-mail service Gmail, which targets relevant advertising at users based on a machine reading of the contents of a consumer's e-mail.

Story Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

[rcrusoe]

Google said no

When the Feds wanted user data, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, etc. just handed it over.

Google said no and went to court to protect its users.

That's good enough for me.

[Marcus Westrup]

And yet not enough

Spammers have been able to get access to the GMail user database - so Google needs to work harder to protect what they have.
(To be fair, Yahoo and HotMail have had similar problems).

[Schratboy]

Too stupid to live

To think that the Feds don't get everything they want, even if companies like Google won't oblige is simply naive. And BTW what user information did Google give to the Chinese government to earn them their premier position. Remember, China has the most draconian Web monitoring standards on the face of the earth.

[`````]

Why google said no was likely because a google is a big number

People would have been astounded to know how much information about them was stored right on their own PC in a format unintelligible to the human perception. Collecting all that information would have meant waiting until every user on every PC had logged in and started their browsers. And then handing over the lease to the Feds of the skyscraper of data-collection servers and nuclear power plant that ran them. Then there's the billion Asians that would be needed to concatenate all that into one humongous spreadsheet, then the schools of Zen philosophers to muse the spreadsheet into one fortune cookie statement that roughly translates: Women like chocolate, buy into chocolate futures before the end of the month.

[slurp812]

Sucess

So it sounds like this is a successful business list. If I were CEO of Google, I would consider this a feather in my cap! They obviously must be doing something right...

[Schratboy]

Success?

Dude, outing everyone's privacy is not something any CEO should be proud of unless you head up the company "I'm a schmuck."

[phantomsoul]

Business

I'm pretty sure that there was a much bigger entrenched business motive behind not wanting to produce those names.

I mean, let's face it -- for better or for worse -- Google is like the antithesis of privacy. We're talking about a company whose mission is to make everything available to everyone. For some things, like fighting entertainment industry oppression, that's great. For other things, like stalkers and other assorted predators, it's not so good.

There's a fine line to walk here...

[`````]

Google's mission is to do as it pleases.

Everyone can google anything or be googled, except the civil-rights-oppressed-by-their-own- government Chinese, for whom the Google wants to make censorship an international law!

[niravabhavsar]

Outgoogling google

Only google can beat google. True when it comes to privacy. For me, google scanning my emails is good enough reason for me not to use google.

[`````]

Google scanning your emails, for what?

A virus? I'm sure that some partner company like McAfee or Symantec is cooking your attachments. Sing with me: Come'on let me tell you about my best friend... I signed up for MSN internet service, got a Passport account in the process, but never sent a single IM or email, and never mentioned my username to anything nor knew about my own email address @msn.com . Two months later after learning about having the msn email address already set up by the ISP, I logged in for the first time and was greeted by no less than 200 spams. I sent myself a test message, and a week later I had over 700 spams. I never deleted them to the day I abondoned MSN's dial-up, but I did turn the rejection filter to "IMMOBILIZE" before only using MSN for their Passport functionality. I infrequently log in, but always after 30 days, thus the cupbo@rd is bare.

[hhs2112]

"Do no evil"

yeah right...

[`````]

The Hippocratic Oath is "Do no harm"

But the definition of harm depends on which quack you're talking to.