Google and collection of personal information

So, some months ago, Google closed my You Tube account for "suspicious activity" or something like that, to be reopened if I entered my phone number.

I hadn't entered a phone number yet.

Presumably the thief could just enter their ruddy phone number, if that was what they were concerned about.

Now, against my better judgment, I tried starting another Google account. It will let you skip entering the phone number, although it doesn't exactly make it obvious that it's optional; I didn't know for sure until they let me get away with submitting the form with that empty. But when I tried putting up a profile picture from a drawing in my image folder, it bugged me with this popup: "Are you sure people will recognize you? There doesn't seem to be a face in this picture."

It used algorithms to tell that. Moreover, it cares. And I know for a fact that Picassa, part of the Google complex, can recognize specific faces. I surmise they want as many photos of faces as possible.

Creepy, creepy, creepy. You Tube comments aren't close to worth this. Google and Facebook have basically become the Sun to Big Brother's North Wind.

edited 2nd Sep '12 10:13:33 AM by DomaDoma

I'm not certain I see a problem with the profile photo part of it— encouraging people to use actual photos of themselves isn't necessarily a Big Brother-ish move, given that those photos are the way we visually identify each other on the Internet. It's not as though it forces you to use a photo with a face, is it?

Even if it did couldn't you easily trick it by uploading a picture of a cartoon character or something?

Faces aren't necessarily the way we identify each other on the net, though. If I posted a picture of my face as a profile picture on an account that isn't attached to the name "Madrugada", the number of tropers who could identify me by it is somewhere under 10. If I put up the fox avatar photo instead, the number would skyrocket.

I just hit skip every time it asks me for my phone number. If it gets to the point where it will bother me too much, I'll probably put in the phone number for some local business or something. I've never had the photo question though, and I think my Google account picture is a picture of a cat. Maybe it's because I joined in 2007?

What concerns me about that is the inevitable Google-bomb abuse. Open an account, give it a profile pic of someone you don't like, proceed to start Googling around for snuff films or something. If it's a high-profile person it'll get edited off like vandalism, but your average Joe will have a huge amount of horrible shit quietly linked to his face even if he didn't actually open the account.

Well, I wouldn't say that it is creepy yet given it is just suggesting you to use another picture rather than stopping you from using a non-picture of you. Just click "yes".

It's not wanting you to use a face that's creepy, so much as wanting you to use a face in light of all the aggressive and invasive data mining that's already done behind your back and would be exacerbated by it.

That.

Google already spams me with ads based on what dog food my father buys. I swear I've never ever ever done a search on it, but the very day he got some for our dear geriatric poodle I started getting ads. They ain't getting my face. Not through me.

My dad doesn't even have a Google account! And we have completely separate credit accounts.

Creepy, man.

edited 2nd Sep '12 10:30:08 PM by Bur

It is pretty creepy, and honestly this ad leveraging on the internet business is seriously getting out of hand. Google has pretty much jumped the shark in that regard, and the level of control that they are exerting on all of their services is starting to make me a bit uneasy.

Even if you don't have a Google account, it still tracks everything that you search and changes your results based on that. As explained here, Google forces you into a filter bubble so you get results you like, e.g. Alice might get info on the protests when she searches for "Egypt", but Bob gets travel and tourism websites.

Google doesn't yet force you to add a phone number, though they try to pretend that they do. It says that adding a number will help recover valuable information if you lose your password, but your phone number is likely more valuable than most stuff sent in your emails since adding it connects your online and real lives. The wanting your face thing is just strange, because the advice we're given in school about online safety is to not post pictures of ourselves on the Internet (not that anyone pays attention!).

I changed the thread title to be less hostile.

And I've been rejecting Facebook and people from using it since.... when?

Not to be too offensive here, but there seems to be a recurring pattern that, whenever a site becomes too social, they'd change policies to attempt assimilation into your details, and it leads to a lot of problems. It was a problem I've experienced myself even without me posting my real looks. And thus a lesson was learned: There is no benefit whatsoever in showing your face on the internet, and the behaviours of FB and Google are incentives for people to be rude anonymous users.

im just gonna leave this here

It's worth remembering, though, that part of the motivation for these things is not creepy. Google wants to know more about you so that it can show you what you actually want to find. Even personalizing ads isn't necessarily creepy; they want to know what you want so that they can show you ads for things that might actually be useful for you.

And of course that makes Google, and its advertisers, more money. That in itself isn't evil either. Making money by providing useful services to everyone concerned isn't an evil motive.

The problem largely comes from not considering privacy concerns, because the people at Google don't think that way. They're young, privileged geeks whose lives are in general fairly open books anyway.

I actually don't mind personalized ads. From what I've seen in Facebook, it basically prevents ads that you don't want from blasting at your face. I've actually been having zero ads in Facebook for a while now. (note that the reason why I HAVE an FB account despite my standing is not because I wanted it. I got it by accident, and I only want to play Simcity Social, which is fun in itself if not for its dastard need for the amount of friends)

I always find Adsense ads more offensive though, and most of them are either scams or have malwares. You have to wonder why Google allow such malicious things exist to begin with.

My main issue is when google decides to sell your phone number or other real life information to advertisers. Snail mail spam and automated messages offering discounts to starbucks are hard to adblock. Luckily we'll get legislation banning such practices 2-3 years after it becomes widespread. It'll be an annoying few years though.

Well, Google AdSense does have some serious quality control issues. I've gotten so many "buy World Of Warcraft gold" ads on You Tube (no doubt due to my frequent perusing of sites related to the game), it's ridiculous. (For those not in the know, buying gold for that game is a breach of contract, and commonly leads to account hacking.)

Tailoring ads to personal information isn't bad...as long as it's optional. Unfortunately, the whole point of advertising is that seeing it isn't supposed to be optional, so we're stuck in a rut here.

My issue isn't with targeted ads. (although I generally laugh myself sick at most of them, since the geographically targeted ones ("Find X near <your location>!" have my location wrong by about 200 miles.)

My issue is that they are targeting search results to what they think I want to hear to match what they think my ideologies are. I choose my keywords carefully, to produce the results I want. Google, please do not assume that you know better than I do what that is. I refuse to use Bing at all because that's exactly what their algorithm does.

edited 3rd Sep '12 4:38:31 PM by Madrugada

Giving your phone number is a pretty shaky prospect in particular. My parents weren't too careful about that not too long ago, and they've been getting about 1-2 solicitation calls a day since from places that place sold it to. They were already on the Do Not Call Registry.

Which was a really, really shaky stretch of the "opt-in business relationship" exception.

edited 3rd Sep '12 4:42:54 PM by Pykrete

Eh, I get a ton of phone spam because I'm currently looking for work. I'm pretty positive that one of the places I applied for sold my info.

Hah, funny thing about that, when I was living in base housing on the Navy base in town, those advertisements always said I lived in Herndon, Virginia. I was curious about that for quite a while, Herndon is a small suburb outside of DC. I was in Southern California in reality.

@TotemicHero: You should complain to Google that they're advertising something "illegal". If some troll can make them cut all ads to TV Tropes over Naughty Tentacles, you can make them drop Real Money Trade advertisers.

@Drunk Girlfriend: I've never gotten phone spam, what is it like?

I used to have my tv tropes email address in my sig line✉

I'm just glad I have the for slight not to use my normal one.

edited 4th Sep '12 4:58:29 AM by joeyjojo

Targeted ads are creepy. I look at something on Amazon, and it follows me across half the net. ._.

@Maddy: Regarding "search bubbling", the usual recommendation is DuckDuckGo. As they pitch it, http://dontbubble.us/