So you feel sloppy on pressing that sign-out button on your gmail account, don’t you? If you affirm that lazy habit. Google has a new product that may want to change your mind. According to Google’s official blog, they have released google dashboard – A simple solution to view your data associated with your account — easily and concisely in one location. Meaning, gone are the days when you visit your “history” on your browser just to see what you have been up to last time.
Here’s an excerpt from the official stament of google:
In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we’ve built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more. The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we’re delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this — and we hope it will become the standard. Watch this quick video to learn more and then try it out for yourself at www.google.com/dashboard.
With this new release, once you are logged-in to any of the service google provides (gmail, google talk, docs etc) it keeps an eye to all of your behavior around 20 google services including, all your google search history (image, video, news) even youtube. Does this sounds nice? Well, if you’ll ask me – It could be but it has a half full / half empty benefits for users.
We are talking about people who keep their privacy to other people, one must realize that some individuals want to keep their “private search” towards themselves only… Alas, if they forgot to sign-out with their google account? (they usually do :D) and some curious cat type-in google.com/dashboard on tommy’s PC – Voila! she realize, Tommy the sheep is in fact Tommy the rabid dog in real life!
Are we on the same page our dear viewers?
Furthermore, unlike internet-browser wherein the user has the option to wipe out browsing details (via clear-history). Google Dashboard, has none… In fact, you can even expand the web-activity and see all the stuff you have been diddling months ago.
We do hope google will make an update to give some users the choice to clear the history on their dashboard account. Have a setting to erase all browsing details on a weekly/monthly/daily basis. Perhaps, add an option to “opt-out” google.com/dashboard when users specifically ask google dashboard not to record their browsing details at that moment. We aren’t saying we don’t trust google our records, but there are instances that shows how google could be a very good peeping tom/eavesdropper every once in a while. Right, from the mouth of Microsoft’s CEO.
(sources: official google blog)
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Tags: google dashboard review, google dashboard rip-off, google dashboard spy, google read email, google spy, google spy on your account
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Well, pretty much any web service provider has information on user activities. That’s how the internet works. All user activities on any web based service creates automatic server log information. Its the same with Google’s services. Nothing uniquely different about it. At least Google has offered a Dashboard to remove such information. Wish, all other web service providers had a similar provision.
By the way, it is Google’s automated algorithms that analyse the usage data to serve you even better. It is not as if some human is prying into your private data. That would be impossible, even for Google.
Deleting history from your browser only deletes it from your computer. The server end information cannot be deleted from from the browser. That information remains with any service provider. That’s where the Dashboard helps… by giving you access to their server to delete browsing history from their servers.
This article says that Google Dashboard is tracking you and collecting your information, when in reality what the dashboard does is show you the information they are and were collecting to begin with.
I just checked it out. On the surface, it looks sinister. In reality, if it’s something you’re not comfortable with, there are two things you can do.
1) You can pause the collection of data.
2) You can tell it to delete specific items from your history.
3) You can tell it to clear your entire history.
Okay. Three things….there are three things you can do.
This article shows the attitude of the typical user. The reality is, the typical user is clueless. There is a bunch of information out there to be read, but the typical user does not read. The typical user is ignorant. The typical user wouldn’t know that Pluto is no longer a planet, no matter how many times it is repeated. It is not until the information has reached a saturation point that the typical user starts debating the fate of Pluto as a planet many years after it is already too late.
The proof in this is the fact that this post seems to indicate that “Google Dashboard” is the same thing as “Google Web History”. Alas, it is not. Google Web History has been around for a long time. It was always just a click away. You can opt-out of it, but you lose the usefulness it gives. All of the other features Google Dashboard displays are the features that have been there all along. So, anyone seeing Google Dashboard as a new way to collect data misses the point that Google Dashboard doesn’t collect new data at all. Instead, it simply shows the data that Google has been collecting all along… and the data Google has clearly stated they have been collecting all. The typical user (and the writer of this post) clearly didn’t read and was ignorant of this data collection for all of this time… many months and in some cases years.
This is exactly what Google Dashboard was meant to solve. It was meant to shed even more light on the issue so that people can’t complain that Google isn’t being transparent enough. And, yet, the even more typical user will never have heard of Google Dashboard, so this battle can never be won.
The ignorance shown in this post also shows another problem of the typical user. They think they know how everything works, but don’t take the time to test it and either prove or disprove these theories to themselves. This post states, “Alas, if they forgot to sign-out with their google account? (they usually do :D) and some curious cat type-in google.com/dashboard on tommy’s PC – Voila! she realize, Tommy the sheep is in fact Tommy the rabid dog in real life!” The simple answer is, “No, that’s not true at all.”
It takes less then a few days experimenting with Google Dashboard (and with Google Web History) to realize that merely being signed in isn’t enough. Even if you are signed into Google.com or Gmail, etc… even though your sign-in status carries over from one service to another… if you visit Google Web History, you are asked to sign in AGAIN. The same goes for Google Dashboard. There is an added level of security for these two services (the same applies to Google Health) for the obvious reasons.
So, this post is patently false on a lot of ideas, insults the intelligence of users who are willing to take more than 15 seconds to observe the world around them, and is likely written by someone who is STILL trying to get the clock to stop flashing 12:00 on their VCR.