Google is watching you

It’s no secret that the media giant Google is the hegemon on the Internet nowadays. Millions of new users continue to register on corporation-controlled sites every day, leaving almost complete information not only about themselves, but about their friends and families. However, many users do not care about their data security. Should anyone be worried about this at all?  

Throughout its long history Google has repeatedly been accused of illegal data retrieval and surveillance of its users. For example, back in 2006, former CIA officer Robert Steele declared about the cooperation between the US intelligence agencies with Google, demonstrating evidence of funding and receiving direct orders from US departments involved in electronic surveillance. Unfortunately, no one took this statement seriously, thinking about Steele as of madman. At that time, against the background of the discussion of this issue in social networks, the corporation Press Service found a cross functional excuse, which is used until now. Google representatives continue to claim that personal data is handling exclusively on the company’s servers and is not transmitted to anyone else. They maintained that the personal data of users is processed to improve the quality of the services. But at that time no one thought about the veracity of Google statements, which by all means tried to hide its illegal measures.

Everything has changed as soon as Julian Assange released his book “When Google Met WikiLeaks”, which completely reveals the company’s cooperation with US intelligence agencies. Assange maintains that Google provides the FBI and the CIA with unlimited access to e-mail and personal data of its users since 2002. Staff members have the opportunity to obtain the confidential information at any police station. Neither a ruling court nor a prosecution resolution is required. In addition, on a commercial basis Google is tend to provide advertising companies with personal data and information about user preferences for further distribution of “targeted” ads.

After the new leak of Gmail accounts in 2018, dissatisfied users organized the “No More Google” flashmob, openly declaring their indignation. Afterwards, several nameless companies have created secure applications that can fully replace the functionality of Google. Some of them are very popular today, which indicates concern about the problem of the preservation of personal data among ordinary users.

There is a feeling the management of the media Corporation feels the impunity. Now they show their overconfidence for all those who use smartphones with pre-installed Google applications. If you, for example, gonna to check the security settings, you will find that the company’s software has the access to your search queries, visited sites, viewed videos, location, IP-addresses and other personal data. We can say that sometimes the search engine knows about you even more than you do.

Maybe this is the reason to change our minds? Perhaps, everyone should join the world flashmob against the Corporation? Should we try to find an alternative software like DuckDuckGo or Qwant? Or is it better to abandon modern gadgets, completely protecting ourselves from interference in personal life? Anyway, the modern society should not allow such inconsiderate interference and continue to uphold the right to privacy.