Running Head: SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?

Should Google Be Allowed to Track Our Private Online Habits?

Austin Allen
English 101 11
Sister Mary Larson
November 19, 2014

SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?

Advertisement is the basic source of revenue for both Facebook and Google. That is why
these companies have been studying for years the types of products appeal to different types of
people. As a result, they have developed extensive ways of tracking and analyzing the habits of
individual internet users. The habits they track include things such as queries entered into
Googles search engine, likes on a Facebook page, internet sites visited, how often these sites
are visited, ads looked at, and thousands of actions performed on a computer by each user.
Knowing the specific interests and impulses of each person, they can determine what products
will entice specific users to buy. As a result, there is an increase in sales and they can then charge
the products advertisers more.
This methodology of targeted advertising is extremely effective, but it has one major flaw. It
is an extreme breech of our privacy. Much of what we do online is highly confidential. Very
sensitive material about our personal lives can be discovered through what we search for online,
the websites we visit, and in many other things we do while on the internet. Other personal
information such as bank account numbers, credit card information and social security numbers
can also be accessed easily by Google and Facebook. In the hands of anyone with malicious
intentions, this confidential information could be a wonderful source for blackmail, identity theft,
discrimination, or harassment. (Ohm, 2010) The question then arises if these companies should
be allowed to track our online actions so extensively, and what restrictions must be put in place
in order to protect our privacy. In order to determine this, we must first consider the privacypromoting laws and methods that have been created to protect internet users, and we must
evaluate their effectiveness. (Paul Ohm, Broken Promises of Privacy)
When creating an online account with Google or Facebook, we are required to read and agree
to a list of privacy terms and conditions, before signing on, that outlines our future relationship

SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?

with the company. There are two main problems with these articles that cause our perceived
sense of privacy to less sound than we think. First, these terms and conditions are so lengthy and
complex that very few of us even read past the first page before clicking Agree. The
documentary Terms and Conditions May Apply claims that most of these terms are so long and
wordy that it would take an average internet user180 hours to read through an average article.
(Hoback, 2013) This means that within those thousands of words, Google or Facebook could put
any term that allows them to do whatever they want with our private information, and with our
given consent they will be completely within their legal rights to use our personal data however
they want. Though this is a real concern, in my personal research, I have not been able to
encounter any examples of Google or Facebook taking advantage of users in this way. On the
contrary, after analyzing Googles terms and conditions article I found that Google, at least, goes
to great lengths to clarify every liberty they take with users personal information, so as to avoid
any legal issues. (www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weinstein/terms-and-conditions-may-apply)
The second problem with these terms and conditions of privacy, as mentioned by professors
Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, is the broad definitions placed on words such as
personal information. A case in point is the California Senate Bill 1386s definition given to
this term, which, according to the bill, is defined as the first and last name of a person only
connected with his or her social security number, drivers license number, account number, or
credit card information. (California State Senate, 2003) This definition does not include any
other information that we might deem as personal, such as telephone numbers, email addresses,
or even our first and last names not connected to governmental identification codes. (Narayanan
and Shmatikov, 2010) This definition then could give any company with restrictions of using
users personal information enough loopholes through which they could, and do, create

SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?

personalized profiles of every one of their users, along with a long list of all of their personal
internet habits which they use for advertisement strategies. (Myths and Fallacies of Personally
Identifiable Information, Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov)
Paul Ohm, an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University
of Colorado Law School, points out the dangers of online companies having access to so much
of our personal information. He summarized his findings of 15 years of research in his article,
Broken Promises of Privacy. Speaking of the potential dangers, he states, Almost every person
in the developed world can be linked to at least one fact in a computer database that an adversary
could use for blackmail, discrimination, harassment, or financial or identity theft. I mean more
than embarrassment or inconvenience; I mean legally cognizable harm. (Ohm, 2010) By
legally cognizable harm, he refers to the fact that any one of us could be taken to court for
lawsuits, or that we could even be incarcerated, because private information discovered by
blackmailers. He concludes that the solution to this problem is for regulators, or lawmakers, to
respond rapidly and forcefully to this disruptive technological shift, to restore balance to the law
and protect us from imminent, significant harm. In other words, now is the time to reform our
privacy laws, and to put restrictions on the amount of information that Google and Facebook are
allowed to know about our personal lives. (Paul Ohm, Broken Promises of Privacy)
Ohms qualifications are definitely credible. His 15 years of research make his arguments all
the more reliable and sound. Yet despite the fact that Ohm is a world-renowned professor and is
one of the leaders of computer science and privacy policy, some may perceive him as over
precautious or even paranoid. While it is true that there is a possibility of anyone accessing very
private information about us in an online database, the likelihood of this happening is extremely
low. Yet it is the possibility of this happening and the fact that it is happening to many

SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?

individuals who suffer from identity theft and blackmail that has caused Ohm and others like him
to infer that we respond rapidly and forcefully to this problem. (Paul Ohm, Broken Promises of
Privacy)
Looking the situation from the other point of view sits the master of analytics and internet
tracking, Google. One particular case illustrates the positive force that this internet-user habit
analyses can have on our economy in general, as well as the future of the business world.
Barbara Pezzi, Director of Analytics and Search Optimization for Fairmont Raffles Hotels
International, turned to Google analytics to improve productivity in Swissotel. She began by
using Google Analytics in order to discover which customers were more likely to buy when
visiting the companys homepage, which customers looked at rooms available in the hotel, and
she observed these and other habits for several months. Finally, her worked paid off. After a
few months of optimization, we have more than doubled our number of visits and transactions.
This clearly shows that while there are definite risks to such a lack of privacy, the economic
benefits are huge, as they increase revenue in our country and in the world.
(static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/analytics/customers/pdfs/swissotel.
pdf)
I retrieved this source from perhaps the most biased source possible, Google Analytics
homepage. And while it is true that these analytical searches do promote profits in companies
and an overall economic benefit to any business that uses these tactics, I feel that it is a Faustian
bargain to trade privacy and protection for wealth. I believe that it is infinitely more important to
preserve and maintain the privacy of the people than to increase sales in corporations around the
globe.

SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?

Facebooks owner, Mark Zuckerberg, recently made a point to inform users that at Facebook
we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure.
(Zuckerberg, 2014) He claims that they have gone to great lengths to encrypt communications,
[] use secure protocols for traffic, [and] encourage people to use multiple factors for
authentication. (Zuckerberg, 2014) Despite his claims, however, I have not found any
foundation for what he says about Facebook spending a lot of [their] energy making [their]
services and the whole internet safer and more secure. I maintain that while Facebook has
provided more privacy options that protect individuals from other users, users in general cannot
be protected by the analytical eye of Facebook itself.
(www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101301165605491)
After considering the powerful economic tool that the analyses carried out by Google and
Facebook are, I can now see that they are a necessary part of the business world. However, this
does not change the fact that privacy must be enforced at a whole new level as we move into the
future. It is essential that effective laws be put in place and adequate privacy tools be developed
that protect internet users from potential threats of adversaries.
The question still remains. Should Google and Facebook be allowed to track our private,
online habits, our search queries, and the sites we visit? The answer is that they are completely
within their legal rights to do so. However, this does not mean that we should not do anything
about it. Once we, as internet users, wake up and realize that we have lost in terms of privacy,
and once we as users refuse to pay the price of exposure for convenient internet use, there will be
no alternative for Google and Facebook but to enforce higher security for their users. This is the
first step we must make in order to protect, and retrieve, our privacy.

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References
Ohm, P. (August, 2009) Broken promises of privacy: Responding to the surprising failure of
anonymization, UCLA Law review, 57, 1701
This article was extremely helpful. Paul Ohm is the leader of online privacy, and this article in
particular has been quoted and used by professors of law and computer science since he wrote it.
Hoback, C. (July, 2013) Terms and conditions may apply, Documentary, United States of America
I could only see a few clips of this documentary, but the part cited above can be found at the
website listed above. I found the documentary most intriguing, but it border-lined conspiracy
theories too much for me to do an in-depth evaluation.
Narayanan, A. and Shmatikov, V (Privacy and security: Myths and fallacies of personally identifiable
information, Retrieved from www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_cacm10.pdf
I found this article to be very reliable. They cite laws in place and present their arguments very
logically.
Google (2013) Google analytics case study: Swissotel, hotel and resorts, retrieved from
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/analytics/customers/pdfs/swissotel.pdf
I found this source to be helpful, but very biased. Even so, all the information is accurate
Zuckerberg, M. (2014) Mark zuckerberg: Paper, retrieved from
www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101301165605491
Mark Zuckerbergs letter to Facebook users is very unreliable, and it does not have any outside
information to back up what he says.

SHOULD GOOGLE TRACK HABITS?