Google, Facebook, and Twitter Syndicating Your Private Information for Profit

If keeping your personal information private and your reputation under control wasn’t already difficult enough for the average web user things just got a bit harder. Google has just recently signed a deal with both Facebook and Twitter to make your status messages and tweets syndicated throughout their search engines depending on what your messages are about. This new feature is called “Real-Time Search” which also has news mixed in from blogs and major news websites that updates by the minute. The syndication can be stopped on both Facebook and Twitter by simply making your status and messages private.

This new feature was also rolled out at the same time as Facebook’s new privacy features were enabled that will allow you to chose what exactly can be shown or not shown by choosing in your settings. If you have not already customized your settings then your profile may be viewable by anyone now including photos that were only able to be viewed by friends before as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently found out. The settings are easy and fast to change by just going to settings and then clicking privacy settings.

Another recent development from Google is their adjustments to the search engines to personalize settings depending on what subjects you like or dislike. This is yet another step towards their behavioral advertising system as the customization of search is done by placing an anonymous cookie in your browser that will track what websites you search for and choose to keep track of your interests to better target advertising towards you and also will adjust the search results to bring the results to the top that they feel would interest you the most.

Google claims the new adjustments will help provide more relevant search results but many privacy advocates disagree especially after Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt made the comment last week that “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” The remarks are pretty astonishing given the fact that Google is not shy about taking as much information as they can from you through their array of programs and companies that include Google Search, Google Analytics, Feedburner, Youtube, Google Alerts, and more. The problem with the new personalized search that is setting up their behavioral advertising is that it’s a completely opt-out program not an opt-in program meaning you will automatically be enrolled and tracked if you ever visit the website instead of having the choice to use the program that tracks you.

The only way to stop all of this personal information from being taken and syndicated is to either not use the websites at all or adjust your privacy settings available on all the settings sections of these websites and your web browser. Making all of the information private will stop it from appearing in the search engines and will also help stop stalkers, identity thieves, sexual predators, and other problems that are associated with a completely open social networking atmosphere. Like always the best way to stop a majority of the potential reputation problems online is to think twice about everything you post and say as once you put it on the internet it can easily be spread and be next to impossible to stop.