Worried about Google knowing everything about you?Want to keep your privacy? Not have your conversations recorded and translated into every language? Not appear on Google Street-View? Want your prospective employers, future in-laws, college admissions people, not to be able to google and find out about that um... incident, a few years back?
Well, Google has an opt-out package for you. Watch the video.
Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village
VIA kottke.org
When can I leave for the village?
ReplyDeleteI need that!
ReplyDeleteI was so totally pissed off to google myself & find out the first site that came up with personal information had added two years to my real age! GAHHHH! Unfortunately, because of my mostly political activities, there is too much crap about me.
I'm on it!
Seriously though, I wish I could get rid of some of that stuff. I mean, in real life, I live in a small town where everyone knows your business, anyway. But, the whole world? ACK!
ReplyDeleteMouse: I'm less keen, It looks too much like an internment camp, and I suspect that there are informers planted everywhere.
ReplyDeleteRita: I seriously think we've gone beyond the point of no return, when it comes to loss of privacy. everything we do seems to be recorded, in some way, and the global power of google seems all pervasive. as I said above, even in a Google-free sanctuary, I'll bet you'd be recorded.
And the internet never forgets.
Once upon a time, it would need people snooping, asking neighbours, looking up the back issues of the local paper, time and effort... now its just a tippity-tap of a keyboard to lay bare your soul.
Yes, but when the information is slanted or incorrect? When implied information is used against you in any kind of public format(in this case when the information has the potential to become internet gossip) you are screwed, if you don't fight it tooth & nail. The whole idea is so Kafka, or Dostoevsky.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking it's more 'animal-farm'ish' myself .... but that's just the mule in me talkin'
ReplyDeletexxx
I googled myself once, now why does that sound vaguely smutty?, and discovered that I am quoted in some quite reputable places, darned fools!
ReplyDeleteRed Dirt Girl: I think you need to check up on Google Barnyard.
ReplyDeleteIn the latest beta update, just released, it zooms in to such a close level that I can see you have not polished your hooves yet this morning.. And whats that? High-heeled muleshoes, hanging by the hayrack?
I was just browsing, and I was checking up on the chicken-hut end of the barn.. Is that a mirror ball?
Hey? Is that a sack of carrots for the donkey?!!!!XXXXX
Rita: Yes, false information sticks to the internet as well as egg-yolk to a tablecloth.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how you deal with falsehoods and nastiness in a medium which is global, and uncensorable.
Maybe just do what politicians do. Hire people to write nice stuff about them and plaster it everywhere, regardless of the truth.
Here. I'll do it "Rita is a fine, upstanding citizen, a person of impeccable morality, and never disobedient to the ruling junta."
There. How's that?
Mouse: I'm impressed that this blog now has a mouse visiting, I'd wondered where they'd all gone, thought I'd been over- zealous with the "little nipper".
ReplyDeleteGoogling yourself will lead to poor eyesight and grey hairs. -Oh dear. I see by your picture that you've been googling yourself rather more often than is healthy.
Jesting aside, googling the name that my mother knows me by, phew. It reveals precious little about me.
well, other than that I'm an internationally famed author, a psychologist in Florida, an Ex Member of Parliament in New Zealand, I was raised in Medicine Hat. (I like that one, I hope it was a magic hat, like the Hemulen's hat in "Tales Of Moominvalley") Umm.. There are nine of me on facebook, but not the me who's writing this. Oh, I'm a renowned interior designer, and I've been knighted by the queen. And I got an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for my work in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Actually, spooky as it sounds, a great many people with my name also share my interests and even my health weaknesses
ReplyDeleteIt can't be supernatural, unless all of the women with my first name also married men with the same surname
I see a blossoming research project!
Unless, of course, Google is playing games with me and if I am to believe The Voices that is the most likely answer!
PS Any cheese over here?
Don't be dissing my disco ball and donkey .... i takes mighty fine care of my premium regulars! As for your mis-information: I had my hooves polished just today, thankee, and boy do they shine. Prescient now are we??
ReplyDeletexxx