Google new data anonymizing policy useless

After much concern on the part of the public regarding privacy issues with Google recording User logs, they "appear" to be listening. However, Internet security expert Chris Soghoian, writing on CNET showed that the move was doing nothing to further anonymity.

Jacques Barrot, the EU's justice and home affairs commissioner thought the move was a good one, but Chris Soghoian asked for more information from google. Google said they would cut down the 18-month anonymity process down to 9 months by removing the last 9 bits of data in an ip address, then after 18 months, they would delete cookie data along with change the last 3 digits of the ip Address. This means that google will not be removing cookie data after the inital 9 months, and only hide your ip address among 1 hundred or so ip addresses.

Soghoian is correct on this matter, seeing as if only the ip adress is removed without deleting cookie data, it is extremely easy for google to identify you. Furthermore, the process will simply continue itself once more, every time you use google for searching. Unless you delete the cookie data manually. What this means is that google can identify you easily regardless of what you do, because you're only hidden among 100 or so addresses even after 9 months, even if you delete the cookie yourself.

On another note, google also claimed they would only store 2% of data they get from google suggest (which we talked about earlier after the Chrome release). They would also anonymize that 2% of data after 24 hours. Unfortunately for them, I think the public already knows enough of google's tricks to not believe google will be anonymizing anything. Saying something like we will not keylog you 98% of the time, isn't going to work. How can we possibly trust google that they will anonymize the data if they continue to disregard concerns, and use tricks like these? The answer, is that we can't. Google needs to stop this immediately, or they might just lose all customer faith.

Tags: Google, Anonymity, Chrome, Google Suggest, Privacy, Internet security, BlitzTech Blog

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