Silicon Valley Sleuthhound – Page 17

Google’s Autocomplete causing big problems

Posted on September 15th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

More trouble for Google in Europe: The Monster of Mountain View is being sued by the spouse of a former German leader who is upset that the search giant’s autocomplete feature suggests demeaning terms like prostitute and escort when her name is typed in. She’s going to court demanding that Google do something about this, and it’s possible she just might win.

Despite Google’s past court victories, this case isn’t necessarily clear-cut, says Thomas Nuthmann, a lawyer at German law firm JBB Rechtsanwaelte. “Under German law, it’s likely that, at the very least, once Google knows that its autocorrect is generating results that present Frau Wulff in a bad light, they become responsible for making changes in her specific case,” he says, adding that, in Germany, famous people have the same protection against defamation as regular people when it comes to their private lives (unless they purposely make their private lives public). “It doesn’t mean [Google has] to shut down its technology altogether—just that it would have to at least disable the results linking words like ‘prostitute’ and ‘Bettina Wulff.’”

It;s unlikely such a lawsuit would ever be filed against Google in the United States. But of course, European law is different. If Google wishes to operate in Europe, it must abide by European law.

Legal Troubles

India launches antitrust investigation of Google

Posted on August 14th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Good to see more regulatory scrutiny:

India’s antitrust regulator has launched a probe against Google Inc over alleged anti-competitive practices by the U.S. Internet search giant, following a complaint by a consumer advocacy group, a federal minister said on Monday.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has received information about contravention of an Indian competition rule by Google, R.P.N. Singh, minister of state for corporate affairs, told lawmakers in a written reply to a question, according to a government statement.

Google has already been subjected to antitrust probes in the United States and Europe.

The Monster of Mountain View has historically been dealt with very leniently by the United States federal government. European regulators have taken a much harder line with the company, especially when user privacy has been threatened. Google has also reportedly caught the attention of authorities in Argentina and Korea.

Since its launch more than a decade ago, Google has morphed into a very successful commercial version of the National Security Agency (NSA). The only reason it is viewed more favorably than the NSA is because it has a more benevolent (though undeserved) reputation. It’s time for people to realize that trusting Google with the details of their lives is a bad idea.

FTC hits Google with record $22.5 million fine

Posted on August 9th, 2012August 9th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that the Monster of Mountain View has agreed to pay a fine for violating the terms of its earlier privacy accord with the agency from two years ago. Google is not admitting to any wrongdoing:

The Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million on Thursday to settle charges that it had bypassed privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser to be able to track users of the browser and show them advertisements, and violated an earlier privacy settlement with the agency.

The fine is the largest civil penalty ever levied by the commission, which has been cracking down on tech companies for privacy violations and is also investigating Google for antitrust violations.

Consumer Watchdog criticized the settlement agreement, calling on the FTC to hold Google accountable for its war on privacy.

“While the $22.5 million penalty levied against Google is a record for the FTC, it is woefully insufficient considering that Google refused to admit any liability or wrongdoing,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project Director. “The Commission has allowed Google to buy its way out of trouble for an amount that probably is less than the company spends on lunches for its employees and with no admission it did anything wrong.”

One of the Commission’s five members agreed. In a statement explaining why he refused to sign off on the settlement, Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch said the FTC should have demanded – and gotten – more.

[T]his is not the first time the Commission has charged Google with engaging in deceptive conduct. This is Google’s second bite at the apple. The Commission accuses it of violating the Google Buzz consent order by “misrepresent[ing] the extent to which users may exercise control over the collection or use of covered information” and accordingly, seeks civil penalties for those violations. In other words, the Commission charges Google with contempt.

This scenario – violation of a consent order – makes the Commission’s acceptance of Google’s denial of liability all the more inexplicable.

We agree. A $22.5 million fine is nothing to Google. It is hardly going to dissuade the Monster of Mountain View from continuing to wage war on users’ privacy. The FTC should have at least gotten an admission of wrongdoing out of this settlement. They folded too easily.

War on Privacy

Surprise! Google forgot to delete data it was supposed to get rid of under privacy accord

Posted on July 29th, 2012July 29th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

As if we needed more evidence that the Monster of Mountain View keeps everything… even when it has agreed to erase data under a binding agreement with the government:

Google has admitted that it had not deleted users’ personal data gathered during surveys for its Street View service.

The data should have been wiped almost 18 months ago as part of a deal signed by the firm in November 2010.

Google has been told to give the data to the UK’s Information Commissioner (ICO) for forensic analysis.

The ICO said it was co-ordinating its response with other European privacy bodies.

In May 2010 it was revealed that Google had scooped up about 600 gigabytes of personal data from unsecured wireless networks while gathering images and location data for Street View.

The data was collected for years in 30 countries while Google compiled information for the mapping service.

The BBC has more.

This is hardly the first time this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last, either.

Undependable Support

Google Talk goes down in massive outage

Posted on July 26th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

It’s unwise to rely on Google as a mission-critical means of communication. A lot of people are finding that out today:

Google Talk went down hard this morning, but is getting back up and running.

“The problem with Google Talk should be resolved,” Google wrote on its App Status dashboard at 8:25 a.m. PT. “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.”

A top priority… sure. That explains why the outage is affecting more than fifty percent of Google Talk’s users.

There are better alternatives available. Skype is well-known, but there’s also open-source software like Ekiga that is more dependable.

Menacing Monopoly

Is Google discriminating against Firefox?

Posted on May 7th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Dean Howell, a self-professed Google fan, thinks so:

I’ve been using Google Chrome for Linux since it was first made available. I use Gmail, Google Docs (now Drive), Google Plus, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Google Music, and many more. I am the original owner of an original CR-48 Chromebook, having received mine way back in Dec. 2010. I promote Google services at work and have worked hard to point my business’ compass towards their entire suite of offerings. I use a Samsung Nexus S with an official build of Android 4.04 and I’m only interested in official devices moving forward.

At the same time, I have been gently treading a fine line between complete faith and trust in Google and fear of the Orwellian future they are capable of realizing for us all.

We lost faith and trust in Google years ago. Virtually every move Google has made since has vindicated our decision to Leave Google Behind. Sounds like Dean is starting to catch on.

I never had any errors loading Slashdot or OMG Ubuntu. Hacker News, Reddit and all the other sites that I frequent all loaded fine, %100 of the time. Of course Google Plus, Adsense, Analytics and Google Drive all gave me “Connection Reset”. So today, while running errands, a really nasty notion came to me. Is Google using user agent strings to create a poor experience in Firefox?

I decided to test this theory.

Dean’s tests confirmed his suspicions: Google’s offerings work just reliably when the browser identifies itself to Google as Chrome or a Chromium-based browser. But errors were commonplace for Dean when his browser identified itself to Google as Firefox.

How typical.

Read Dean’s post for more.

Shoddy Security

Google inadvertently distributing malware to its own users through “Google Play” Store

Posted on May 4th, 2012June 29th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The Monster of Mountain View has been caught with its pants down again:

Google has been caught hosting more than a dozen malicious titles in its official Android app market. Some had been downloaded tens of thousands of times and turn smartphones into zombies that await commands from their attacker overlords, security researchers said.

A stash of 17 malicious apps remained freely available in the Google Play store, according to a blog post published Thursday by researchers from antivirus provider Trend Micro. Six of those titles contained a highly stealthy code dubbed Plankton, which causes Android-based phones to connect to command and control servers and wait for commands. At least 10 Plankton-based apps found last year in the Android market collected users’ browsing history, bookmarks, and device information and sent them to servers under the control of the attackers.

Isn’t one of the major justifications for walled garden-style app stores like “Google Play” to protect users? To prevent people from downloading malicious software? (Yes, that was a rhetorical question).

There’s no question app stores have been successful in allowing companies like Apple and Google to wield a huge degree of control over the user experience on their mobile platforms. But while that control may be good for the corporate bottom line (it keeps people locked in), it’s bad for user freedom, privacy, and security, as this report makes clear.

War on Privacy

New York Times reveals identity of the technological mastermind behind the Wi-Spy scandal

Posted on April 30th, 2012May 7th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

“Engineer Doe” is no longer anonymous:

At the center of the uproar over a Google project that scooped up personal data from potentially millions of unsuspecting people is the company software engineer who wrote the code.

Google has declined to identify the engineer, as has the Federal Communications Commission. The F.C.C. recently closed its 17-month inquiry into the project, Street View, with a finding that Google broke no laws but had obstructed its investigation.

The agency also said it was unable to resolve all the issues it was considering because the engineer — whom it referred to in its report on the inquiry as Engineer Doe — cited his Fifth Amendment right and declined to talk.

Now a former state investigator involved in another inquiry into Street View has identified Engineer Doe. The former investigator said he was Marius Milner, a programmer with a background in telecommunications who is highly regarded in the field of Wi-Fi networking, essential to the project.

Who is Marius Milner? He is a talented engineer who still works for Google (in the YouTube division) and has been referred to by fellow hackers as a god. He developed a Windows-based utility called NetStumbler, popular with wardrivers, which excels at sniffing out wireless access points, including home routers. (A wardriver is a person who searches for wireless networks as a hobby).

Google has been attempting to shield Milner from public exposure, but now that he has been outed by the New York Times, they will no longer be able to do so. Milner has yet to be hit with litigation for his involvement in the Wi-Spy scandal. Google has contended in court that it spying, made possible in part thanks to Milner, was not unlawful and it should not be punished for invading the privacy of millions of people without their knowledge. We urge courts in every jurisdiction to find otherwise.

Menacing Monopoly, War on Privacy

“GDrive” finally materializes as Google Drive

Posted on April 25th, 2012April 25th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

We’ve long suspected that at some point, Google would launch an online storage offering in competition with Dropbox, Box.net, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, iCloud, and Amazon Cloud Services. And now they have.

Google is taking the wraps off a long-anticipated product that it views as one of its most important launches of the year, as the Internet giant continues its push toward a future in which users’ photos, spreadsheets and other data primarily live on the Internet “cloud” instead of a PC or some other device.

The launch of “Google Drive” Tuesday has been a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley, with the name and a rough description of the online storage product widely circulated in recent weeks as Google has worked out the final bugs. Drive will open up to millions of users around the world starting Tuesday, allowing them to sync their files between PCs, smartphones and tablets.

Google’s main intention with its new Drive offering, of course, is to take mining of personal information to a whole new level. With Drive, Google is going beyond its existing Gmail, Docs, YouTube, and Picasa offerings, and inviting users to upload pretty much everything they might normally keep on their desktops and laptops to its datacenters. The problematic user agreement Google created for Drive naturally does not provide adequate protections for the privacy and security of the people who use it:

While private files winding up on Google Drive may not be as privacy-protected as the ones on your hard disk, fact is that Google is not granting itself free rein to use personal data. But you’d be hard-pressed to know that given a “toxic brew” of conflicting claims found in the company’s omnibus privacy policy, according to a legal expert who has closely reviewed Google’s policies.

“The language is not drafted nearly as tightly as we would expect from a company of Google’s size and stature,” says Eric Goldman of the High Tech Law Institute. He describes the covenants as poorly written and likely to confuse users by virtue of Google mashing licensing and privacy statements together.

Several companies and media organizations have already warned their employees that Google Drive’s terms of service are problematic, and the offering should not be used.

We agree. Stay far, far away from Google Drive.

Poor Quality Assurance, Undependable Support

Gmail goes down, again

Posted on April 17th, 2012April 17th, 2012 by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Whole lotta people inconvenienced this morning:

Google’s e-mail service, Gmail, is being reported as offline for many people this morning.

The extent and cause of the outage isn’t known at the moment. It is not a complete outage, but Twitter is abuzz with reports from users unable to access the Web service.

Users seem to be reporting mostly outages in Gmail.com accounts. Users of Google business e-mail accounts (Google Apps) are also reporting issues. Google’s Apps status dashboard reports, “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Mail. We will provide more information shortly.”

Other services, such as Google Docs and Google+, also appear unusable for those who are unable to access Gmail.

Google has tried to encourage the belief that its offerings have rock-solid reliability, but the truth is, they don’t. This isn’t the first Gmail outage, and it won’t be the last. There’s no good reason for anyone to trust the Monster of Mountain View with their email.