‘What’s wrong with trusting Google?’
p2pnet news view | Kids & Kartels:- For us, foxes being given free range in hen houses always comes to mind when we think of Internet ad company Google and user privacy.
With that in mind, there’s and interesting request in Slashdot from someone who says s/he provides IT services for medium-sized medical and law practices.
“Lately I have been getting a lot of feedback from doctors and lawyers who use gmail at home and believe that they can run a significant portion of their practice IT on Google Apps,” says an anonymous poster, going on »»»
From a support standpoint, I’d be happy to chuck mail/calendar service management into the bin and let them run with gmail, but for these businesses, there is significant legal liability associated with the confidentiality of their communications and records (e.g., HIPAA). For those with high-profile celebrity clients, simply telling them ‘Google employees can read your stuff’ will usually end the conversation right there.
But for smaller practices, I often get a lot of push-back in the form of ‘What’s wrong with trusting Google?’ and ‘Google’s not interested in our email/calendar.’
Weighing what they see as a tiny legal risk against the promise of Free IT Stuff(TM) becomes increasingly lopsided given the clear functionality / usability / ubiquity that they experience when using Google at home. So my question to the Slashdot community is:
Are they right? Is it time for me to remove the Tin Foil Hat on the subject of confidentiality and stop resisting the juggernaut that is Google? If not, what is the best way to clarify the confidentiality issues for these clients?”
Coincidentally, we home-school our daughter, Emma, and she and a lot of her friends hang out on a purpose-built site carefully monitored to make sure nothing nasty gets in, and that user privacy is protected.
The people who run the site believe Google is God’s gift to us all and are currently seriously thinking about using Google apps to reconfigure it, basing the entire site on Google ‘technology’.
So, should the folks who run the home-school site similarly stop resisting the juggernaut that’s Google? Should they trust it and let it loose in this small online community where kids to some extent develop standards they’ll take with them into adulthood?
Or should they avoid it like the plague?
JN
Slashdot – Can We Abandon Confidentiality For Google Apps?, August 4, 2009
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August 6th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I recently was told by my Chiropractor’s assistant that they were using Google Calendar to coordinate appointments between two locations and to provide remote access to that schedule. I pointed out to them that Google Apps, while easy/convenient/free, might not be as secure or private as they believe. Of course, I was wearing my tin-foil hat at the time…
August 6th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
When Google:
(a) develops a real privacy policy (they don’t really anonymize IP addresses with search in any real way);
(b) clearly opens up their security system and guarantees encryption at rest
(c) develops a real tech-support line that extends beyond just 24hr email (which isn’t always quick to respond to complaints)
then I might consider them for my own stuff, but not until then.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
@ Chris:
“(a) develops a real privacy policy” … which explains in explicit and painful detail exactly what they don’t, and won’t do with data they collect; and, which explains precisely what data they collect in equally painful detail …
And even then, I’d still think twice
Cheers!
August 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
What’s wrong with trusting Googone? (i will not spell the name correctly)
Lets see…..would you allow a known pedo to pick up your kid(s) from school?
Would you drive a car that you know has absolutely no brakes?
I could go one and list a bunch of utterly stupid acts to compare to trusting
Goober, but i think you can get my point. They have one REAL agenda, to grab
all the money they can by using YOUR personal data to make THEM money!!
Dont buy into their BS about how they care about users of their “services”!
They care about nothing but the money YOU can put in their pockets.
Nothing more, and nothing less. I think I’d rather swim with sharks!!