Google Flu Trends – an invasion of privacy?
A few days ago, Google announced its new Google Flu Trends, a daily updated Web page that uses search data to identify trends in flu outbreaks across America. While this is a clearly a very useful tool, and Google intentions are sound, that hasn’t stopped the privacy rights groups coming out in force and asking questions over how the data is collected. Time to dust off those tinfoil hats again.
I detailed Google Flu Trends in an article on Nov. 12, and explained how Google was using its vast supremacy as a search engine to actually make a difference in the world. Influenza is a big killer and so tracking the movement of the virus could potentially help prevent or slow epidemics and consequently save people’s lives.
But, as I also hinted in my article, there was always likely to be some groups not happy with the idea due to the way data collected about us is being used. Google Flu Trends works by using search data relating to flu from each state to build up a fairly accurate picture of where and when flu is spreading. But while the intention may be good, the fact that data is being collected in the first place worries some.
CNET details the concerns of one of these privacy groups. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has reportedly sent a letter to Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, asking for details on how Google Flu Trends protects privacy. The organization claims the records could adversely affect people if put in the wrong hands.
This argument doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny because the statistics published on Google Flu Trends are so vague and general that no one person could possibly be identified by it. But Google Flu Trends is based loosely on Google Hot Trends, a site which compiles the most popular search terms being typed in to the Google search engine at any one time.
EPIC asks questions about this bigger picture, that search data not relating to flu could be used against someone unless Google guarantees never to reveal it to a third party. Searches on “how to make a bomb” or “how to grow cannabis” for instance, have the potential to get people in trouble were the IP addresses or cookie value handed over to the authorities.
While Google does collect this kind of data, it anonymizes it after nine months and even then wouldn’t give it up without a fight. But the fact it’s collected in the first place will worry some, and there only choice at the moment seems to be to stop using Google altogether. In the long term, hopefully either Google will regulate itself or the government will do it for them. Until then, keep that tinfoil hat handy just in case.
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November 17th, 2008
If you don’t want your privacy violated, don’t go online.