Google the “Borg” like entity of the interwebs has long kept record of what you search for, where you live, what you do, where you like to shop, what you buy - it even spiders your email so it can hit you in the face with more directed advertising.
And we have been taking it. Taking it and liking it and asking - begging them not to stop. You wouldn’t give this kind of information to your best friend. Why give it to a faceless monster that grows each day - getting larger, swelling by the second with the information of millions of people. Confidential and personal used to mean something. The Google cares not.
Why - no - HOW do we let this stand? Big brother is no longer a dream written in a book somewhere, it is reality. We are being watched. Little by little our online anonymity - our privacy - is being sucked away and we let it happen. We let them take all that we have and we don’t say a word about it.
I will not let this continue. I will not let Google continue to take what belongs to me.
How will I do this? With a new promise to myself for the new year. 2008 will mark the time when I no longer feed the Google Monster with my data, my information, my email. No more will I search with their pages or use their email or other glittery free tools - designed solely to sucker me into compliance and acceptance of their awesome power, their ability to control the internet and to decide how I surf or sell advertising.
I am moving to Ask. What? Am I insane? Ask is the lamest of the lame and with 4% of the search market, what is the point?
The point, my friends, is AskEraser - The tool that could possibly save the internet from the evil that all of this personal information databasing will one spew onto the masses - destroying privacy and leaving nothing in its wake.
From their site: “At Ask.com, we believe that you as a user should have the power to control the usage of your search history. When enabled, AskEraser will completely delete your search queries and data from Ask.com servers, including: your IP address, User ID and Session ID cookies, as well as the complete text of your search query”
THE USER SHOULD HAVE THE POWER TO CONTROL THE USAGE OF SEARCH HISTORY! THE USER SHOULD HAVE THE POWER TO CONTROL THE USAGE OF SEARCH HISTORY!
The internet has come a long way and with its evolution we have just accepted what the search engines have told us. They need our information, to help us. They will never use our information against us - This IS BULLSHIT. We should not let them keep force feeding us this. We should not let this continue.
Now is the time to leave. Before it becomes too large to stop, before it takes so much from us we cannot fight. Do not let this information database continue indexing everything you do.
Free yourself before it is too late. Take back what is yours. Keep your privacy.
Responses to “Resistance is futile - or - New years resolutions”
December 13th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Do you find it hypocritical to advocate social networking sites but at the same time be anti-data-gathering?
I suppose the only difference is, is that on social networking sites the user chooses what goes public, and can decide exactly what other people see.
However with things like the Facebook Feed, or Spokeo - whose slogan seems to be ‘Find your friends, track your friends.’ - the amount of privacy one has might be arguable.
They don’t call it ‘Facebook Stalking’ for nothing.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:07 am
“Even when Ask Eraser is enabled, we may store your search activity data if so requested by law enforcement or legal authority pursuant to due process. In such case, we will retain your search data even if AskEraser appears to be turned on.”
http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/about/askeraser.shtml#12
Your privacy is still an illusion. 
December 13th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Groooovy! Although I rather have an excessive of information about myself out there, then for no one to know about me
But I’m not one of those paranoid types 