Experts shocked at Google Dashboard

6 Nov 2009, 12:11 pm   -   Source: Agencies, SBS Staff
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Anyone who uses a Google account when online can now view what the company is keeping on them. (Getty)

Anyone who uses a Google account when online can now view what the company is keeping on them. (Getty)

Google's new dashboard service allows users to see - and delete - data that the search engine has stored on them.

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Google yesterday announced a new service called 'Google Dashboard', revealing how much they know about all of their millions of registered users.

A full history of  email and chats, the adverts users have clicked on and sites they've visited, as well as the videos they've viewed on youtube, can now be viewed in one place.  Significantly, users can delete some of the information stored on them.

'Greater transparency'

The search giant said the dashboard is to give users 'greater transparency and control' over personal account data stored by them.

And while some privacy campaigners are welcoming the launch of dashboard, it is suprising all kinds of users.

Experts 'astonished'

Professor Peter Sommer, an Informations Systems academic at the London School of Economics, said that even he was 'astonished' what the company was keeping , advising all Google users to check what is kept on them.

Google's success is built upon data, allowing the company to sell better and more relevant, targeted advertising. However, Sommer suggested that data kept is 'vastly in excess' of what Google needs to sell advertising.

Sommer also called the data kept a 'delight' for police and the secret services, calling it 'exactly what they want.'

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Your Comments

Why be suprised?

Di - from Queensland, 3 years ago

The skill these days is trying to keep yourself off the web; cause once anything is up there; it's freely available in cyberspace...ppl are dumb...or don't think outside the square. We are only a civil libertarian away from all being microchipped!....

A lesson

JW - from ACT, 3 years ago

Anything that goes on the internet, stays on the internet.

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