Will you pay Gmail $9/Month?

If you ever wondered how much your personal information that Gmail collects would worth, one rough figure could be $9.00/month. 

Google took in $37.9 billion in revenue in 2011, and $36.5 billion was from ads. According to an NBC News article, if Google stops collecting personal information, therefore they lose their advertisement income, all the Gmail users will have to pay 9 dollars per month to cover that loss.

A couple days ago (March 26, 2012), the FTC called for industry to develop a voluntary mechanism to let consumers signal they don’t want their data collected by online companies. Bloomberg Businessweek says that Leibowitz (current FTC Chairman) foresees there will be a certain type of tangible "Do-Not-Track" options will be available to consumers in 2012.

Although I support this privacy protection mechanism, and there is no doubt that every individual has to be informed about the data that is being collected about her/himself, I am still wondering what the flashback would be if Gmail, Facebook begin to ask us to pay monthly charges, and also wondering what percentage of people would be willing to pay for the services.

Many may still let the online companies collect their personal information. If Gmail alone charges 9 dollars per month, to opt out from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other will cost several times more than that. I wonder how many people will be happy to pay another bunch of utility bills when they get the same service as before while the leak of personal information is not visible, or does not make their lives unreasonably uncomfortable (although it can be somewhat creepy sometimes).


If the implementation of this mechanism becomes a mandatory requirement for the business, the wordings on their data sharing terms and conditions (in exchange of user info) will be very interesting things to pay attention to along with the user responses. 

Google Plus Circle Management

As Google+ Circles were so annoying, I did some experiments and research to find out a couple of ways to minimize the exposure. If one wants the highest publicity and wants to be included in other circles, this post many help you do the opposite. lol (so, please do the opposite)

Limit Visibility of the Circles You Are in:

1. Go to this page: https://www.google.com/settings/privacy?tab=4 (login required)

2. Find the following section and set the visibility:

(The following screen-shot shows google+ default setting)

 

Limit Shared Content:

1. Go to this page: https://www.google.com/settings/plus#  (login required)

2. Find the following section and decide which circle(s) can share your postings:

(The following screen-shot shows google+ default setting)

 Also Edit "Photos" section on the same page:

(The following screen-shot shows google+ default setting) 

 

These findings look not that much information, but it took quite a while to find the locations! 

Hope this will help.

I also sent a feedback to google wondering if there is anyway to prevent other people from adding  myself into their circles. I will update here if I hear anything from them.

Hope this helps! :)

Google +

So far I found two annoying things on Google+

1. Circling annoys hell out of me:

Anyone can add me in their circle and I will show up when someone else looks at their profile. -> This freaks me out effectively.
I have been trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening.  I will add this on this posting soon as I figure that out.

2. Photo Sharing:


I have a handful of Google+ friends and I did not know if I could see all of their pictures they have ever put on Google service. With my blurry vision, I was not able to see what on earth those were (thumb nails on my 11" laptop). So I randomly clicked a random picture (looked like sky + a red dot) without thinking. It was my colleague/friend's wife in the picture (I guess - sky was ocean and the red dot was her!!) and she was wearing a swim suit!!! And there was a pop-up window that made me go mad saying "Your photo preference has been saved." What the?????? So... all of a sudden my photo preference became looking at my friend's wife's pictures????? I got out of Google+ in less than a second feeling sabotaged...

Ugh... BTW I am writing on Google Blog right at this moment.

Help!!!!

Facebook Gone Wild before Google

After last weeks posting, I began to think about privacy again! and here is why I am concerned about privacy. This month, Google's privacy policy is discussed here and there. However, Google is not the first giant online service who changed its privacy policy when the users are "settled in."

Here is what facebook did from 2005 to 2011 re: their privacy policy.

A quick summary of FB privacy change 2005 - 2011 

***** 

2005: No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings. 

2006: …We understand you may not want everyone … to have the information you share on Facebook; … Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community … 

2007: … Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings… 

2009: Facebook is …to share your information with anyone you want. …You should review the default privacy settings and change them … Information set to “everyone” is publicly available …may be imported and exported by us and others …. The default privacy setting for certain types of information … are set to “everyone.” 

December 2009: … such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone…and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings. 

April 2010: When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. …The default privacy setting for certain types of information … are set to “everyone.”   

  
April 2011: …Facebook is about sharing information with others …. We share your information with third parties when we believe the sharing is permitted by you…

*****

I am sure they kept changing it after 2011. Please check FB's current privacy policy here.

As Google now has one privacy policy on tens of products of theirs. Small changes may make a big difference now. Will keep an eye on their privacy policy changes!