Monday, October 6, 2008

Google Analytics and privacy

Thanks to Taylan's advise on Google Analytics. I have been using it to check the traffic of my blog. Then started to wonder am I the one who visited the most. Then we had the guest speaker in class talked about Analytics tool and also recommend Google Analytics. It is actually quite amazing how it can trace the source, the country of the viewer, number of new visit, etc. But it also make me think about the privacy issue. If Google can trace every step of my Internet habit, then they can also analysis consumer/ Internet surfing behaviour. So where do we draw the line?

Thinking about the privacy issue also make me wonder about blog or other social networking website that we purposely leave a trace or tell the world about our life. How can we complain about how company is spying on our life while we just published in public. I guess the difference is that is my choice to tell my about my life that I don't mind share but don't like the idea of commercialize activities that is spying on me.

The recent article "Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China" is about Skype in China were under surveillance and the conversation were found recorded in system. Now we would start to wonder who is listening to our conversation? I wonder with the modern technology these days, are our life under surveillance or will come to that? What will our life be then?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

interesting! So did u register your blog with Google Analytics? Or you are using some keywords that is searched most.

Newvalleygirl said...

Simply register with Google Analytics and it will give you some HTML code to insert into the webpage of the blog.

Benjamin Wright said...

newvalleygirl: A few months ago Google claimed it could impose its legal terms on the public just by publishing the terms. Maybe members of the public can impose their own terms of privacy protection on Google just by publishing those terms! A person might -- for example -- say in her published privacy terms that analytics engines cannot keep records of her activities longer than a week. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html My ideas are not legal advice for any particular situation, just fodder for public discussion.