Gmail Privacy: Are You Giving Away Your Business Plans to Google?
When you go to an Internet marketing event, you don’t run around the room telling all your potential competitors your new business ideas and trade secrets. And if you find spyware on a computer filled with your business documents, you don’t leave it there to harvest your confidential information.
Why not?
Because you want to implement your plans before someone else does.
Yet the odds are good that you’re telling Google your business plans and other confidential information on a daily basis. And if you believe Google’s informal “Don’t be evil” motto, then perhaps your trust is well-placed.
But are you willing to take the risk?
Here’s an example…
I recently sent an e-mail to one of my Gmail accounts from my law firm as a test. The e-mail described a nonexistent “Project X” as being being important, potentially the “next Google,” and the need to get a patent right away to protect intellectual property rights.
Checking the message in the gmail inbox, I was hit with a bunch of sidebar ads by attorneys including patent lawyers.
Think about that for a moment.
If Google is willing to sniff through your e-mail to target advertising, what is it willing to do when it comes to your business ideas that you’re communicating back and forth daily by e-mail?
Note that I”m not picking on Google. The same could be said of Yahoo! and others. Google just happens to be a very good example because major Internet marketers prefer to use it because of ease and functionality. However, this convenience comes at a price…the privacy of your business plans.
If you develop a better widget, understand that your e-mail communications are not private. And when it comes to gmail, know that the content is being actively scanned for keywords…at least for advertising. Perhaps more. Who knows? Maybe your widget plans will become Google Widget 1.0. If so, good luck trying to collect royalties.
On a lighter note, check out this related humor video regarding Google and privacy.
Cash for Clunkers: Government Computer Spy Program
When you take advantage of the cash for clunkers car program (the Car Allowance Rebate System), the U.S. federal government gets to play computer spy without your permission.
Here’s how it works.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) mandates car dealers register in order to participate in the program. However, a condition of registration requires the dealers to surrender all data on their computers and treats those car dealer computers as if they were owned by the federal government.
Now imagine if you tried to pull a stunt like this when someone bought a product from your website. In other words, every purchaser was agreeing as part of the buying process to surrender complete access to their computer files to you and allow you to treat their private data on their computers as if you owned it. Want to bet how long it would take for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to come after you and how quickly you’d be sued for deceptive trade practices?
Yet somehow privacy rights advocates who have been complaining after 9/11 about Big Brother aren’t saying anything about the spying for clunkers program. Makes you wonder if their agenda has anything to do with privacy or perhaps just partisan hit jobs depending on who they like to see in the Oval Office.
Let’s be frank. Invasion of privacy is invasion of privacy. It shouldn’t matter which political party is responsible for doing it. If the Republicans did it under the Patriot Act, it doesn’t justify the Democrats doing it under the Cash for Clunkers program. Both are shredding your constitutional rights.
Hat tip: Washington Times
