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Google's controversial new privacy policy could have an especially big impact on people carrying around Google in their pockets. Google will in March begin sharing info it collects across its platforms when users are signed in—and Android users essentially always are. "I guess it's theoretically possible to use an Android device without being logged on," one privacy advocate tells the Washington Post, "but that wouldn't be much of a smartphone."
Google disputes the notion that the change will be especially important for Android users, noting that the phone won't collect any more data than it already does. And that's true, analysts say, but Google will now be able to use the data in more ways—and that alone should make Android, which has never been a terribly profitable product, into a very valuable one.
So, as you can see, the initiative could be of particular significance for consumers of Android devices, who are almost always signed on to their phones and tablets, experts said. Without signing up for an account, an Android smartphone owner would be limited in what he or she could do on the device, they said.
The company said users who activate Android phones without signing into a Google account can make phone calls, browse the Web and use pre-installed applications. But they couldn’t use their Gmail, chat functions or download Angry Birds, Pandora or other applications from the Android Marketplace.
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for free speech and privacy online said that because Google account holders cannot opt out of the new policy, he fears that the company’s efforts to compile information about users won’t accommodate those who want to separate their personal and professional digital lives. The policy change also alarmed some lawmakers and consumer advocates.
The search giant offers a couple of options on what information is associated with any given Google account. You can get an overview of all the data Google associates with your account by looking at the “Dashboard” option on your main Google account page. There’s a lot of information on this page, such as Android devices associated with the account, calendar information, contact information, Gmail history and records of activity on Google Music, Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Voice and social connections through Google contacts and chat.
You can edit some account preferences through this page, though other information, such as what Android devicesare associated with your account, can’t be edited.
Apart from the Dashboard, users can turn off the setting that allows Google to record their search history . This record logs all your search history and the results that you’ve clicked on from those queries. To get to this menu, head to the “privacy” menu from the top navigation bar you see when signed in to your Google account. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the button that says “Go to Privacy Center.”
From there, you can see Google’s current policy — the company has also put a notice at the top of the page with a link to its new policy — and you can head to the “Privacy tools” menu by clicking on that link and scrolling down to “Web History Controls.” From here, you can pause, edit or remove all Web History.
Source : The Washington Post
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