Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Today Is the Last Day to Clean Up Your Computer History

As of tomorrow, March 1, 2012, the internet really is forever.

Tomorrow Google's new misnamed "privacy policy" goes into effect.  Google euphemistically calls this "treating you as one user".  Anything you view on Youtube, mail via Gmail or search on Google's search engine will be compiled to make a profile of you.

This change will be retroactive, meaning anything you've already viewed or searched will be included in this compilation of personal data.

It's a good idea to clean up your history today. Otherwise it will live on infinitely in Google's files.

First, clear your Google search history using these easy STEPS to erase your searches.  Even if you've cleared the cache in your computer, Google still has this data until you erase it.

Next, clear you Youtube viewing history.  This article will show you how.

Then look ahead to the new changes on Facebook.  You have until March 30 to remove anything that you do not want to become a permanent part of Facebook.  That is the day that FB's new "Timeline" becomes mandatory.

Any apps you have enabled will become permanent, showing up to display your "stripper name" or "which Twilight character are you?" at any given time.

Any angry or intoxicated post you may have made since you joined Facebook during your misspent youth becomes fair game and may appear at random on your personal page. 

Any photos that you have been tagged in may pop up to prompt a little trip down memory lane.  An embarrassing Christmas party photo could potentially haunt you.

Read this advice on making your Facebook history a bit less voyeuristic.

Cleaning these items up, of course, doesn't make them disappear altogether, because we all know the internet is the modern version of eternity.  However it will make things more difficult for the average stalker and will give you at least a thin shield as privacy policies become a lot less private.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Open Letter to Google

Dear Google:

Well, you've done it now.  You've really ticked me off and I am breaking up with you.

Just because you are bigger than everyone else, it doesn't mean that I'm going to tolerate you bullying me and controlling me.

You have changed from being my friend, someone I could look to for answers, into being someone who tries to protect me from the truth "for my own good."  You have become a tool for the advancement of communism.

An example, you ask?

What about the fact that when I use you to search for information, you only provide me with the information YOU want me to have?  Despite the fact that Infowars and Prison Planet get more hits than many of the mainstream news affiliates, their information no longer comes up unless I specifically ask for them.  Google, you have actually removed Infowars from your aggregator system in an effort to censor what I read!!!!  Because of government pressure, even though the SOPA bill has been shelved, you are doing your own version of SOPA by blacklisting sites that do not toe the party line.

Google, you aren't my father.  I don't need you to sift through the information available and decide what I should be reading.  If you can't lay it out there and give me all of the pertinent information I'm requesting, you aren't someone that I want to be with.

Furthermore, Google, I believe that you are spying on me.  Don't try and deny it.  When I disable cookies in my control panel, I get messages from you saying I cannot access my own  blog without them.  This blog is my intellectual property and you have no right whatsoever to keep me from it.  But suddenly, it seems, I must permit you to spy on me and plant things in my computer to have access to my own blog. 

And there's more, Google.  Imagine my dismay when I read that you are considering policing us all by gathering information about "thought crimes".  Your possessiveness of my mind has to end.  I'm allowed to study things that interest me, like government conspiracies, the safety of the vaccines that I'm urged to give my children, or the veracity of current global warming theories.  Not only are you planning to "tell" on me for studying these things, you are planning on providing me with only the information YOU want me to have.  It's true....I read it HERE!!! You are pretending to be my friend when you are actually in the back pocket of the greedy elite like George Creepy Soros.

My fury with you, Google, is unmatched.  I refuse to be with someone who doesn't respect my intelligence as a person, who does not allow me the privilege of reading all of the information and sifting through it myself, and who has so little respect for my intellectual curiosity that they would provide me only with propaganda.

So, Google, this is how it is.

I'm leaving you.

I've found a new search engine.  I'm with startpage.com now, and you're just going to have to deal with it.  Yes, startpage may be a little slower and may not provide the same results, but at least I know that startpage can be trusted, unlike you, dear Google.

I've cancelled the ads on my blog - you can keep your money.  I'd write this blog on a pile of diner napkins and air drop them before I'd continue to take money from you.  Your ads, while lining my pockets, are also just a way for you to keep me under your thumb, abiding by your rules.

I'm searching for a new host for my blog because of your controlling ways.  It may not happen today or tomorrow, but I can easily foresee the day in which you begin censoring what I write, and that simply will not be tolerated.

I've removed your toolbar from my computer.  Yes, Google, it's packed up in a box and I'll leave it on the porch for you if you want to pick it up.  Otherwise, it goes out with the garbage on Friday.  I want nothing from you left in my computer.

It's over Google.

Daisy