No one will ever know you, only what you let them see
People using Google’s email service, Gmail, on a relatively new BlackBerry smartphone may have noticed recently that some contacts now have small photos next to their names. They may have been surprised to see them there – after all, these are not photos taken by the BlackBerry itself, and its manufacturer Research In Motion has struck no data-sharing deal with Google.
Those images appear because Google has taken a profile photo users uploaded to Google+, its social network, and incorporated it into their contacts’ Gmail address book.
This is just one example of how Google is increasingly combining the information it holds about its users from its dozens of products, which range from a search engine and maps to Android smartphones, flight checkers and language translation apps.
One line in Google’s privacy policy, which came into force on Thursday, explains how it is able to do this: “If other users already have your email or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.”
But when, in late January, Google published this new document detailing how it is combining the personal information it holds about its users from its dozens of different products, many privacy advocates, data protection officials and state regulators let their simmering distrust of the internet company boil over. “Google didn’t ask us if we, their customers, minded our data being merged and used in new ways,” said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, a digital activist. “Most people will have no choice but to put up with the change. That is wrong.”
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