Google's new privacy law, and how to protect yourself. Do it before March 1.

[shireen]

My understanding of the new google privacy laws are quite elementary. If you're more familiar with it, please correct me if I've misunderstood it. And please start your own threads to raise awareness about it.

Starting March 1, all google services that you access with your google account will start sharing information about you in order to target their advertising to your interests. That includes searches in the google search engine, you-tube, and gmail.

If you have a google account, you may be surprised to see that google has a history of everything you've been searching since you opened that account. They will use that information -- your personal information -- for their targeted advertising.

What you do with google services is your business, it's none of their business. If you don't want Google to use the information in your web search history, you can erase your current history and block their collection of future web history.

This website has simple instructions on how to do it:
http://www.webpronews.com/dont-let-googles-privacy-policy-out-you-clear-your-web-history-before-march-1st-2012-02

If you have more than one google account, do this for each of your accounts.

[saras]

1. I'm more interested in pouring large amounts of random searches in.

It gives better (i.e. more inclusive and more representative) Google results.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Mine was already set to 'off'.

But thanks for the heads up anyway.

[Sherman A1]

3. another option is

to eliminate your google account.

I use them sometimes, but have no accounts with them or You Tube.

[bananas]

4. Thanks - thought I had a few more days

forgot that February only has 28 days...

[krispos42]

6. Leap Year

You have one more day!

[chalky]

5. Google can still gather and store your info after taking these steps.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-remove-your-google-search-history-googles-new-privacy-policy-takes-effect

"[UPDATE 2/22/2012]: Note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement.

"With Web History enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented."

That being said, I still made sure that sucker was set to "off".

[Curmudgeoness]

7. They will have a hell of a time figuring me out.

My searches are just all over the place! I search for the most mundane and the most shocking, very conservative and very liberal. So I say "have at it".

My only question is: if you do not have "an account", but have google as your toolbar search engine, is that the same thing?