Footprints in Cyberspace

All eyes are on Google as a court order to hand over personal information on its users has many concerned about privacy infringement.

Viacom claims that the data is necessary to the 1 billion dollar copyright infringement case against Youtube (a company owned by Google.)

This begs the question as to why Google was holding on to the data in the first place; which couldn't be compromised via court order if it wasn't stored.

Orin Huirvitz discusses and criticizes Google's privacy policy here.

As we streamline media use and integrate it with social networking; we leave a larger and more precise footprint in cyberspace.

One of the inherent advantages of the Internet; being able to track and quantify everything; becomes an issue of privacy.

Everything we look at and even how long we look at it can be tracked to the second. A company called Tacoda even tracks where your mouse goes on a given website. (If you want to opt-out of their data collection you can choose to do so here.)

User privacy is a big deal; I remember when AOL made user data available to the public...for no reason.

As legislators, judges, and lawyers sort through everything, it is probably worth your time to carefully read the statement of user privacy the next time you sign up for anything online.

-Robot Crusoe