Privacy and Data Mining

TWTPOLL: Should Marketers Use YOUR Private Emails to Family and Friends to Target Ads at You?

April 12, 2011 By growmap 54 Comments

I believe this has actually been in the works for many, many years, but now they are publicly promoting this capability. You can read How Gmail Ads work

Personally, I consider this unethical because emails between you and your family, friends, clients and others should be PRIVATE – not data-mined so ads can be targeted at you.

Some people have been embarrassed by inappropriate intimate ads appearing in their email. Others have found creative ways to Massacre Gmail Ads.

I have a better way. I don’t use gmail.

Oh, I HAVE gmail accounts. You can’t work online and avoid them easily. (I even told Buzz NO but it appeared anyway.) I just don’t use them. But since many of the people I email to do the emails I send them are data mined.

In a recent post Big Brother Yahoo and Google Too I shared this information from a user of Yahoo email who experienced another type of email data mining. [Read more...]

Big Brother Google and Yahoo! Too

March 18, 2011 By growmap 59 Comments

Imagine my surprise when I logged into a ymail account that is TOTALLY separate from this blog and saw blog posts going back to Dec 6, 2008 in someone else’s Yahoo account.

I log into lots of other people’s email and AdWords advertising accounts and that causes some serious problems.

Did you know that if you log out of one Google account and do not log into another Google account that everything you do is placed in the Google history of the account you were last logged into?

Consultants could end up with some serious client issues if they
do searches for one client that end up in the history of another.

You can clear Google Search History but is it REALLY cleared?

The screen capture below shows the page in that Yahoo account that appears when I went straight to mail.yahoo.com – that account has this page but other ymail accounts I checked do not so this could be something new they’re testing or rolling out OR it could be some setting. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Privacy and Data Mining Tagged With: big brother, email, google, yahoo

SEO, SERPS, Is There a Google Search Engine Fairy?

February 25, 2011 By growmap 76 Comments

“Google is not your friend
In fact, you are not even Google’s customer.
You are the PRODUCT Google sells to its customers.”
~ Adam Toporek in Google+ and the Illusion of Privacy

Credit for sharing this video @MicalJohnson in Don’t be Evil Google
Mical in turn credits @Ed_Dale who just published
*BOOM* Google Upends Search - I Warned You!

See also Google’s Real Name Policy: Why YOU are the product

Pete from Currency Exchange commented in my Google Monopoly post, writing,

“I must admit I have an implicit trust in Google to deliver authentic and trustworthy results. So long as the company adheres to clear principles and punishes those that manipulate the SERPS I won’t object its influence. Is there such a thing as a benevolent dictator?”

His comment is an excellent example of so many reasons why we are all losing our rights and freedoms every day. This short comment set off so many warning bells in my brain that this post is the result.

“Implicit trust in Google”

This is based on pure and simple PR from continuously being mentioned and written about in the mainstream media in everything from movies, prime-time television shows, soap operas, and major newspapers and news coverage both online and off.

Google’s “don’t be evil” is akin to
used car salesmen saying “trust me”.

Google Trustworthy? NO:

NEW: Google and Facebook accused of bypassing iPhone’s privacy settings to spy on owners to build advertising profiles
Google NSA Secret Relationship (Their relationship with both the NSA – U.S. National Security Agency – and NASA) [Read more...]

Filed Under: Privacy and Data Mining, SEO / Google / Organic Traffic Tagged With: google serps, SEO / Google / Organic Traffic

Everything You Do Online is Being Tracked. Find Out How, By Whom, Why, Now What

September 14, 2008 By growmap 16 Comments

If Google isn’t Big Brother they’re doing a pretty good imitation. And escaping them is no easier than getting away from the Thought Police was for Winston. Once you understand how Google Web History works you’ll have a pretty good idea how all the others who are following us around work. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Privacy and Data Mining Tagged With: privacy

If GrowMap is About Growing Your Business, Why All the Posts on Privacy?

September 14, 2008 By growmap 11 Comments

Before you start using any online method to grow your business – whether that be blogs, directories, social networking, advertising or any other method – you MUST understand how your activities online are being tracked so that you can control to which accounts your activities are being linked.

Bear with me because this is a very important concept that all Internet users really need to understand and absolutely critical to those who are using the Internet to promote their business, non-profit, personal interests or any worthy cause.

There is no way to know how many sites are in collusion to track your activities across the Net. [Read more...]