Yesterday I received an e-mail from Google about the changes to their privacy policy. On the face of it, it seems reasonable that they would like to consolidate all their policies into one. The downside to this is that they also plan on sharing that information across their products which gives them a better picture of all your Internet activities. The question the, is what will they do with this information.

Having stated the above, some sites are very clear on their privacy policies.  For example, look at the Trollbeads privacy policy.  They state that they do not give out your information.  Given that this is a jewelry site, they would gain very little in giving it out.  The site’s goal is to sell jewelry.

Google on the other hand is interested in your information.  They make money based on it.

If you are concerned about privacy, there are two simple steps you can take to obscure the information that any website or search engine sees.

1. Use multiple user names or ID’s when you access a site.  This spreads your data across accounts which breaks any direct linkage to you.
2. Use an anonymous proxy that changes your IP address so that your accounts are not linked to your IP address.  Even better would be to use a shared proxy because many people will be using the same IP addresses thus rendering the information collected by the website useless.

One “desperate” woman from New Jersey committed another not-so-unusual case of identity theft just to get even with her ex-boyfriend. Her “ingenuity”, a case of impersonation, has nearly succeeded in ruining another person’s image online. She was able to create a fake Facebook page using her ex-boyfriend’s name, photo and some personal information. After creating the page, she then posted inflammatory comments. While a judge ruled that she can be accused of identity theft, legislators have to think further about the case’s wider implications for cyber speech.

The woman took the identity of her ex-boyfriend, who works as a police narcotics officer. The posts that were mostly self-destructive appeared to be made by him. There was one comment that talked about his being “high all the time”. Others mentioned his disreputable activities like frequenting prostitutes and escort services, and that he had herpes.

Impersonation, however it is done, is aimed at obtaining a benefit for one’s own self or to injure or defraud another. Way back in 2006, the issues of online impersonation and cyber bullying came out and quickly spread. It all started with the suicide of a 13-year-old girl who became a target online by a fictitious 13-year old boy. The case concluded with the “boy” being identified actually as the mother of another teenage girl.

Collecting personal information from users on the internet is not a new issue. It has been around for a long time, and it started out as something that was commonly done. For example, it was normal to provide your name and email address when you registered on a certain website. Social networking sites would even give users the option to provide even more sensitive personal information. Users willingly shared data with different web companies, not thinking about any privacy implications.

Then, targeted advertising was popularized by companies that use this collected personal information. They have accumulated so much of it that they could build profiles of users, especially when it comes to their product preferences. Immediately, privacy advocates cautioned users to be more prudent when sharing their personal data. Despite intensive consumer education, privacy issues got worse, and problems cropped up.

One thing that many internet users ignore to give due consideration is personal information that they share online. For whatever reasons, it seems that information sharing has become very common and natural. Online users do not sense any damaging consequence that could come along with such data sharing. Too much personal information have been freely uploaded that privacy laws have to be improved. This is because many companies are taking interest on these data to be used for their own gains.

Social networking is one site where people could plainly give out their personal information. Facebook for instance has about 500 million users around the globe. This number of users has at least their basic private information open to practically anyone else online. All these data are in the custody of the networking business. These same data are what the government trying to defend in line with privacy laws.

As mentioned before, many internet users have become very careless in uploading information. With technology on the go, the government desires to put added control over data selling. Many government officials support the planned enhancement of privacy rights protection.

On the other hand, Facebook also has taken the test to redesign its strategies in the US. It has accepted the stand of the government leaning towards a stricter discharge of privacy laws. For this, the company has taken a stride ahead of the rest of its counterparts like Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn.

The city of Los Angeles has proposed a multi-million dollar buyout of all sorts of Internet information: e-mail, personal information, even police records. They propose to use Google to find all of this information; essentially tap Google’s unlimited database. Although the city wishes to buy everything for noble reasons like criminal tracking and other crime deterrents, the public worries for its loss of privacy.

Paul Weber, who spearheads the Los Angeles Police Protective League, says that he himself is worried. He says that his unit has little knowledge on what the plan fully entails, and they are quite worried about what the repercussions on the public’s privacy will be. He is especially worried about the release of confidential police records and other criminal data.

He was right, and not the only one worried. The online messaging giant Twitter sent out a message to be careful when using Google, because they frequently use “cloud computing”: storing files online rather than in their direct control. This allows the data to be much easier to hack and get into. Twitter isn’t the only one to have this concern though, but it a novel event that one huge company calls out another.

This shift from keeping data and information online is useful, as it cleans up the massive amount of space needed to store all of this data, but it represents many security issues. For one, the whole thing would be accessed by a username and password system, so if a hacker got either, he could be on his way into a gold mine of information. This is also amplified by the fact that many people link their accounts together, so if a hacker gained access to one account, he could actually be getting into many accounts. Also, there are not as many layers of security that prevent an interloper from gaining access.