Google Goes Down Again?

[AndyRM]

Google = Skynet.

We're dooooooomed!

 

[ASC1951]

I would be more concerned about the news where councils are selling electoral roles to 3rd parties.

Er.. why? The Electoral Roll is and always been a publicly available document. Third parties have a legal right to inspect it for free, so why shouldn't councils charge for letting them have a copy?
And for many years you have been able to opt-out of having your name included in those copies.

 

[Frood42]

Er.. why? The Electoral Roll is and always been a publicly available document. Third parties have a legal right to inspect it for free, so why shouldn't councils charge for letting them have a copy?
And for many years you have been able to opt-out of having your name included in those copies.

I just dislike things where you have to opt-out, it should have been a opt-in tick box.

 

[ASC1951]

I just dislike things where you have to opt-out, it should have been a opt-in tick box.

So do I, in principle. But the Electoral Roll is rather different - you are legally obliged to have your name on it and councils are legally obliged to show it to whoever asks. Telling councils that they don't have to provide copies would need a change in the law, but if I am ever Supreme Being that would be done. It would be part of my universal ban on all advertising except at the point of sale; and recipients of junk mail would have the right to have each item collected by the Marketing Director of the offending organisation, in person and on foot....

 

[vernon]

I think the point of this thread has been miss-understood.....

What point were you trying to make?

 

[Octet]

What point were you trying to make?

"With an increasing number of people, especially young children, making themselves more and more vulnerable online... is it time for someone to act and what should be done about it (if anything), or is it an unavoidable consequence of the changing times?"

It isn't just about Google, when I posted the thread that was just the most recent event that happened, and the problem is more than just services collecting data but also the freeness that people seem to think they have when posting content online.

 

[vernon]

"With an increasing number of people, especially young children, making themselves more and more vulnerable online... is it time for someone to act and what should be done about it (if anything), or is it an unavoidable consequence of the changing times?"

It isn't just about Google, when I posted the thread that was just the most recent event that happened, and the problem is more than just services collecting data but also the freeness that people seem to think they have when posting content online.

It's more than a tad wooly and hardly surprising that you didn't get the sort of responses that you anticipated.

Isn't your premise more to do with social networking and any reference to Google being redundant?

 

[Octet]

It's more than a tad wooly and hardly surprising that you didn't get the sort of responses that you anticipated.

Isn't your premise more to do with social networking and any reference to Google being redundant?

Personally I believe that they are all major issues. The reason I included Google, Amazon and Microsoft as examples was because it clearly shows that even the biggest named companies are still vulnerable to issues (whether malicious or not). We are trusting such companies (including social networks) with a lot of personal data and although social networks collect more than most, search engines and others are still a problem.

There is a famous example of a teenage girl who became pregnant, and before she had even told her parents, they had received advertisements through the post from a company called "Target" offering pregnancy related products, as a result of data collected through websites on the subject.

My question is more trying to gauge peoples views on the topic, and whether or not something should be done about it and by whom.

 

[vernon]

Personally I believe that they are all major issues. The reason I included Google, Amazon and Microsoft as examples was because it clearly shows that even the biggest named companies are still vulnerable to issues (whether malicious or not). We are trusting such companies (including social networks) with a lot of personal data and although social networks collect more than most, search engines and others are still a problem.

There is a famous example of a teenage girl who became pregnant, and before she had even told her parents, they had received advertisements through the post from a company called "Target" offering pregnancy related products, as a result of data collected through websites on the subject.

My question is more trying to gauge peoples views on the topic, and whether or not something should be done about it and by whom.

You are still unfocussed and seem to troubled more than is good for you I'm afraid.