The net closes
The exposure of a massive database of Google customers' search queries, some of them excruciatingly personal, highlights the internet’s power to infiltrate our privacy.
In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur".
But what could a psychic guess about him compared with what the world now knows?
[This story is one of hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands, revealed recently when AOL published the details of 23 million searches made by 650,000 of its customers during a three-month period earlier this year. The searches were actually carried out by Google - from which AOL buys in its search functions.]
No comments:
Post a Comment