Google drops wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user's names
by Volker Weber
When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company’s “number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.”
And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick’s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names and other personally identifiable information Google has collected from Gmail and its other login accounts.
But this summer, Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand – literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.
Google doing the wrong thing. In 2016.
Comments
Ok, time to close the next account. Using GMAIL only for forwarding mail another address, but I guess it is time to stop this now.
Thanks for hinting..
Not so sure it's a bad thing if you're a Google shareholder?
It's a competitive market for targeted advertising and I would wager that if they didn't combine these data streams then they would lose ground to Facebook.
Google is the Creator of Business with Big Data. From this perspective Google, with all available data collectors/measuring points, is more like Facebook on steroids. You can delete your Facebook profile and delete the mobile apps from your Android phone. But to get rid of Google tracking you have to buy another smartphone.
Which is a pretty good idea, I might add.
