Google Will Allow You To Opt Out Of WiFi Location
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Back in June of 2010, Google got into a more than just a spot of trouble when authorities in France discovered that Google’s Street View Cars used people’s WiFi connections without permission. Google tapped into people’s WiFi connections to know the locations of phone users. The company then collated info (that can’t be found otherwise due to lack of GPS technology on the phone or inaccurate data from cell phone towers) into a WiFi database, and that raises a lot of privacy concerns.
After the debacle in France, however, Google is forced to backtrack if only just a bit. According to an announcement by the company, Google will soon allow people to opt out of its WiFi data collection. People will have the right to forbid Google to list them up on its database, and this option will be available as soon as this autumn.
Google isn’t the only company to face privacy concern issues. Just recently, Microsoft was sued for privacy violation for allegedly spying using the Windows Phone 7 OS.
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This just underscores just how much the Internet privacy discussion is being framed by those who profit from harvesting our personal information.
Once again, the norm for big business is to place the onus on individuals to opt-out of being tracked and allowing our information to be inventoried. This is routinely done as ad networks sell personal user profiles to advertisers, but this is a new twist. Google is now using your Wi-Fi signal to help them sell location-based advertising. It’s one thing when Gmail users pay for Google’s email service by allowing their email to be analyzed for advertising value – after all you get the email service for free – but Google using your personal Wi-Fi information isn’t providing you ANY benefit!
Google is exploiting the fact that you can’t keep your Wi-Fi signal within your walls. Would it be OK for a company to use high tech listening devices to listen to conversations it could hear through your walls and show you advertising based on your conversations?
Individual consumers have no idea how Google uses these systems to track their every move, and there’s little reason for the company to educate them because it has not needed anyone’s permission to track them. Many would argue that Google should offer an “opt-in” option, and then convince people that the service benefits them somehow.
The fact is that businesses who make money off our information in an opt-out world argue that “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than to seek permission.” I’m sure that’s true, just as I’m sure they will continue to harvest, package and profit from our private lives for just as long as we let them.
This clearly illustrates just how far we still have to go to protect our privacy.