Law in the Internet Society

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SethLindnerFirstPaper 19 - 01 Feb 2010 - Main.SethLindner
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  on your side. Explaining in any individual instance that a particular privacy policy does what they all do is a pure waste of words.
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  • I suppose the value of parsing privacy policies depends on one's opinion of one's audience. Given the number of my classmates that use Google products (e.g., GMail) on a regular basis, I didn't think that it would be completely obvious to them that Google's privacy policies were just as bad as the others. I take your point, however, and I'll make this portion much more concise in my revision.
 Let's first look at how Google handles "personal information," which Google defines as information that "personally identifies you." The first problem is that Google presumes to know what kind of information personally identifies its users. It identifies name, email address, and billing information as examples. Even if we leave sophisticated data mining techniques aside, doesn't it seem possible that something like a simple list of the ten people that you call most often might pretty easily identify you. Next, the Policy plainly allows Google to "process [personal information] on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party." So, even if the information that Google didn't classify as "personal" wasn't enough for third parties to identify you, those same parties can get Google to process the personal information to fill in the missing gaps.

Revision 19r19 - 01 Feb 2010 - 22:40:40 - SethLindner
Revision 18r18 - 24 Jan 2010 - 15:52:29 - EbenMoglen
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