Friday, January 16, 2009

GDS Privacy Concerns

Question:
Does Google Desktop transmit any information (e-mails, etc.) from your computer to Google. Someone today thought it did.

Response:
Not really.

There is a way of technically doing that, but all of the information is contained on your system. Some things are 'hosted' such as Gmail, GDocs, GCal, but the desktop info that it gathers while it 'crawls' your desktop is contained in a ~2G+ folder on your harddrive. Some institutions do not allow for the feature that I really enjoy, and that is where one can have GDS on, say, your office computer and access the files from your home computer.

http://desktop.google.com/mac/privacypolicy.html

Information we collect

  • The Google Desktop application indexes and stores versions of your files and other computer activity, such as email, chats, and web history. These versions may also be mixed with your Web search results to produce results pages for you that integrate relevant content from your computer and information from the Web. Your computer's content is not made accessible through Google Desktop to Google without your explicit permission.
  • Your copy of Google Desktop includes a unique application number. When you install Google Desktop, this number and a message indicating whether the installation succeeded are sent back to Google. Also, when Google Desktop automatically checks to see if a new version is available, the current version number and the unique application number are sent to Google. The unique application number is required for Google Desktop to work and cannot be disabled.
  • If you choose to enable Usage Statistics on Google Desktop, it allows Google Desktop to send crash reports and to collect a limited amount of non-personal information from your computer and send it to Google. This includes summary information, such as the number of searches you do and the time it takes for you to see your results, and application reports we'll use to make the program better.
  • If you choose to enable personalized features for a Google-created gadget, Google Desktop may send non-personal usage data to Google in order to provide personalized content, such as personalized news.

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