I'm not saying don't do anything online, what I"m saying is be very, very aware of what you're doing, and beware google. They ain't the warm fuzzy socially conscious company they're cracked up to be.
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Thank you, Gretchen and LH. I have a better idea about all this now, and I don't do very much of either anyway.
Oh yeah... Google is a dangerous lot. All you have to do is read up on who Sergey Brin and Larry Page are and what makes them tick.
We have several clients who are concerned about their intelectual property who ask us to block any access to any Google site. Or they break out a secure subnet and only allow Google access from the 'unsecure' subnet.
But that is the option? Bing? (Microsoft) MSN? (Microsoft AND NBC)
To be more safe, if you concern yourself with these things... Beware of what you do on any website that begins with HTTP:// instead of HTTPS:// Its a start.
secure
If the part of the page where you actually conduct the transaction is NOT secure, I would run away. LOL
I would find it hard to believe that any online business worth half a cent would NOT use SSL (another word for https) on their pages. (I.e. The MAIN page might be http but it should go secure when you click links to the part where you actually conduct a transaction.)
Also, look for an icon of a padlock in your toolbar; I think that shows up for both Internet Exploder and Firefox; I don't know about other web portals.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64D60E20100514
Whoops! Google says mistakenly got wireless data
(Reuters) - Google Inc said its fleet of cars responsible for photographing streets around the world have for several years accidentally collected personal information that consumers send over wireless networks.
Technology | Lifestyle | Media
The company said on Friday that it is currently in touch with regulators in several countries, including the United States, Germany, France, Brazil and Hong Kong, about how to dispose of the data, which Google said it never used.
"It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks," Google Senior VP of Engineering and Research Alan Eustace said in a post on Google's official blog on Friday.
Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, did not specify what kind of data it collected, but a security expert said that email content and passwords for many users, as well as general Web surfing activity, could easily have been caught in Google's dragnet.
Ohh! How careless of them! :D
I don't know about other parts of the US but here in Ohio there are grocery stores that have member cards that are scanned they will give you a discount on the items on sale as long as you scan your card.
What they are really doing is gathering info on what you drink, wash with, wipe with, read, eat, snack, smoke, use birth control all the thousands of items you buy at the grocery store are scanned and put into a file marked YOU.
I find that pretty upsetting.:(