Googling Security

brothke writes "It has been suggested that if one was somehow able to change history so that aspirin had never been discovered until now, it would have died in the lab and stand no chance of FDA approval. Similarly, if we knew the power that Google would have in 2008 with its ability to aggregate and correlate personal data, it is arguable that various regulatory and privacy bodies would never allow it to exist given the extensive privacy issues." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?
author	Greg Conti
pages	360
publisher	Addison-Wesley Professional
rating	9
reviewer	Ben Rothke
ISBN	978-0321518668
summary	Explores the many security risks around Google and other search engines

In a fascinating and eye-opening new book Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?, author Greg Conti explores the many security risks around Google and other search engines. Part of the problem is that in the rush to get content onto the web, organizations often give short shrift to the security and privacy of their data. At the individual level, those who make use of the innumerable and ever expanding amount of Google free services can end up paying for those services with their personal information being compromised, or shared in ways they would not truly approve of; but implicitly do so via their acceptance of the Google Terms of Service.

While the book focuses specifically on Google, the security issues detailed are just as relevant to Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask and the more than 50 other search engines.

My friend and SEO guru Shimon Sandler has a blog around search engine optimization (SEO). In the over three years that his blog has been around, my recent post on The Need for Security in SEO was the first on the topic of SEO security. Similar SEO blogs have a very low number (and often no) articles on SEO and security. Sandler notes that when he mentions privacy issues around search to his clients, it is often the first time they have thought of it.

The book opens with the observation that Google's business model is built on the prospect of providing its services for free. From the individual user's perspective, this is a model that they can live with. But the inherent risk is that the services really are not completely free; they come at the cost of the loss of control of one's personal information that they share with Google.

The book lists over 50 Google services and applications which collect personal information. From mail, alerts, blogging, news, desktop, images, maps, groups, video and more. People are placing a great deal of trust into Google as each time they use a Google service, they are trusting the organization to safeguard their personal information. In chapter 5, the book lists over 20 stated uses and advantages of Google Groups, and the possible information disclosure risks of each.

In the books 10 chapters, the author provides a systematic overview of how Google gets your personal data and what it does with it. In chapter 3, the book details how disparate pieces of data can be aggregated and mined to create extremely detailed user profiles. These profiles are invaluable to advertisers who will pay Google dearly for such meticulous user data. This level of personal data aggregation was impossible to obtain just a few years ago, given the lack of computing power, combined with the single point of user data. The book notes that this level of personalization, while golden to advertisers, is a privacy anathema.

Chapter 6 is particularly interesting in that it details the risks of using Google Maps. Conti explains that the privacy issue via the use of Google Maps is that it combines disclosure risks of search and connects it to mapping. You are now sharing geographic locations and the associated interactions. By clicking on a link in a Google map, the user discloses and strengthens the link between the search they performed and what they deemed as important in the result. By aggregating source IP addresses and destinations searches, Google can easily ascertain confidential data.

After detailing over 250 pages of the risks of Google and related services, Chapter 9 is about countermeasures. Short of simply not using the services, the book notes that there is no clear solution for protecting yourself and company from web-based information disclosure. Nonetheless, the chapter lists a number of things that can be done to reduce the threat. Some are easier, some are harder; but they can ultimately add up to a significant layer of protection. Chapter 9 details 11 specific steps that help users appreciate the magnitude of their disclosures and make informed decisions about which search services to use.

Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? is an important book given that far too many people do not realize how much personal information they are disclosing on a daily basis. An important point that the book makes is that small information disclosures are not truly small when they are aggregated over the course of years. Advances in data mining and artificial intelligence are magnifying the importance of the threat, all under the guise of improving the end-user experience. The book emphasizes the need to evaluate the short-term computing gains with the long-term privacy losses.

The final chapter notes that apathy is the enemy. As a user becomes aware of the magnitude of the threat, they will see it grow every day. But the next step is to take action. Be it with technical countermeasures, taking your business where privacy is better supported, or petitioning lawmakers.

As to the underlying question, "how much does Google know about you?", the answer is that it is a colossal amount, far more than most people realize. For anyone who uses the Internet, Googling Security should be on their list of required reading. The risks that Google and other search engines present are of great consequence and can't be overlooked. If not, privacy could slowly be a thing of the past.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.

You can purchase Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

That's Gotta Be A Long Book

Googling Security

About 830,000,000 results returned.

Aspirin?

Are they saying that aspirin is so simple and helpful that Big Pharma never would have allowed it on the market or would have it tied up in all sorts of patents? But the comparison makes it sound like aspirin is harmful, seeing as Google is portrayed as more powerful than we would have let happen if we knew the future in advance.

And who would have stopped Google from doing what they did? That's like saying "If people knew what Microsoft would become, they would have stopped it." Huh? If people knew who John Wayne Gacy would become they would have stopped him except they couldn't because they didn't know.

Re:

Aspirin is harmful in large doses, it will deteriorate the lining of your stomache, contributing to ulcers. At low enough doses, the stomache is able to repair the damage, and you gain the blood thinning benefits that help prevent heart attacks.

Re:

Aspirin is harmful in large doses, it will deteriorate the lining of your stomache, contributing to ulcers. At low enough doses, the stomache is able to repair the damage, and you gain the blood thinning benefits that help prevent heart attacks.

Isn't any drug dangerous in doses past the prescribed rate? Typically they say that overdosing on something will kill you, but the truth is that it will lead to something that will eventually kill you.

Isn't that the point of warning labels? "Do not take past X pills for every Y hours?"

Re:Aspirin?

Are they saying that aspirin is so simple and helpful that Big Pharma never would have allowed it on the market or would have it tied up in all sorts of patents? But the comparison makes it sound like aspirin is harmful, seeing as Google is portrayed as more powerful than we would have let happen if we knew the future in advance.

No, they are saying that aspirin has so many side effects and health risks that it wouldn't be approved if tested under today's rules.

Re:Aspirin?

Your comment is under rated. That is exactly the point. Also, overdose typically means "died from" not "took more than recommended dose", sometimes "severe complications from". Aspirin was a miracle in its time, but there are a significant number of people that react very badly to it, from those at risk of ulcers (high stress, heavy drinkers) to those with normally low blood pressure can suddenly find themselves in a very slow painful death. If you look at "causes of accidental death" in this country, "non steroid anti-inflammatory overdose such as aspirin" accounted for ~7,600 deaths in 2000 [drugwarfacts.org]. Compare this to 17,000 for all illicit drug related and incidental deaths and 32,000 for prescription drugs and it is pretty revealing. OTC drugs are not even on the chart, yet just asprin is. Compared to many things, Aspirin is much more dangerous than people give it credit for.

Re:Aspirin?

The more usual example given is penicillin.
Penicillin which has saved a million times more lives than even the most hyperactive cartoon hero.
Penicillin which has made so many nightmare deadly diseases into matters of a week feeling a bit off.

That same penicillin wouldn't have a chance of getting through drug trials.Penicillin allergy is one of the most common drug allergies and the way drug trials are run the moment the first test subjects went into anaphylactic shock the trials would stop and the drug would be thrown in the bin. Never mind it's potential. Never mind the value we now know it has, it would have gone in the bin if it had had to pass modern drug trials and countless lives would have been lost.

Funny side note. If you thought peanuts might cure cancer and you put them through trials as a drug they wouldn't even get to the stage of being given to actual cancer patients since someone would almost certainly have a severe reaction before that point.

Re:Aspirin?

The aspirin thing is retarded. If aspirin were created today, it would cost $5 a pill and make billions for Bayer. Then a plaintiff's lawyer would sue Bayer for billion bucks after Reye's syndrome kills some flu-ridden kids who took aspirin, and then Bayer would be rocked with a scandal when the blood-thinning properties of aspirin causes deaths in the elderly who got ulcers using aspirin.

Google's "Do no harm" PR smoke screen...

Google provide what governments want, i.e. "Information", and as information is power, no government would want to stop Google. (Unless that information gathering power was directed at them).

Also from the main title page: "Similarly, if we knew the power that Google would have in 2008 with its ability to aggregate and correlate personal data, it is arguable that various regulatory and privacy bodies would never allow it to exist given the extensive privacy issues"

That's basically saying the boiled frog

So many inventions

Similarly, cell phone cameras would have been banned from ever being marketed. It's way too easy to film goverment officials and law enforcement agencies commiting abuses of power, when before that it used to be your word against theirs, with their word always winning.

Why does nobody ask Google anything today?

Forget the what-if-we-knew-x-years-ago supposition : why does nobody - no regulatory body that is - demand that Google explain exactly what data they collect and what the heck they do with it?

Really, it seems that, since they started out saying "do no evil", everybody took their word for it and let it go at that. Google is worth billions, reaches millions worldwide, provides dozens of services people have come to rely on, and yet no-one knows what they do exactly, aside from banalities such as "their business model is selling ads". Heck, even Microsoft is under 100x more intense scrutiny than Google...

I like and use Google services as much as the next guy, but their ultra-secretive habits make me very wary of them.

Re:Why does nobody ask Google anything today?

why does nobody - no regulatory body that is - demand that Google explain exactly what data they collect and what the heck they do with it?

Regardless of why they're not doing it, I'm glad they are not. Collecting personal information which was willingly disclosed is not a crime and should not be.

Willingly disclosed?

Regardless of why they're not doing it, I'm glad they are not. Collecting personal information which was willingly disclosed is not a crime and should not be.

I'm not sure I agree. Do people "willingly disclose" the contents of their emails, their searches, their map queries, their photos, their videos, etc by using Google services? Personally, I'm trusting them not to compile all that information and sell it - but what if they did?

With data mining, the whole is much more than the sum of the parts. Your individual queries might not be worth protecting - "ooh, I can't have Google know that I want an office chair!" - but in aggregate, they might reveal where you live, your financial status, your relationship troubles, your medical problems, what products you like.... stuff that marketers would die for.

If people knew what their "willingly disclosed" info could be used for, maybe they'd be less willing.

Re:Why does nobody ask Google anything today?

Which misses the point of the book - that you can be disclosing personal information without being aware of it.

Apathy has always been the enemy

My grandparents refused I remember a long time ago to give out their Social Security Number to anyone.

I remember when you put your credit card onto the manual machine and then made sure to get the carbons.

For the luxury of convenience we have given up our security our anonynimity in not just the digital world but the world at large.

And for this price we get one-click shopping and online bill paying and such. But when the waiter swipes you card # it all comes back to you.

And am I any better than anyone else in this regard ? No. Not really.

Denial works well here.

For all we know, Google could have an extensive psych profile on each of us, know the names of everyone in our family, and probably even determine our level of education or our professions based simply on our search queries.

Google's reputation, however, is mighty squeaky clean, and until it is revealed just exactly what kind of information their computers can put together from your web habits (and what, exactly, they do with it), I have a feeling we'll be in denial about it for a very long time. I mean, they really, really have a couple billion metric fucktons of money.

I refuse to put any more information into Facebook than I already have because, unlike Google, Facebook doesn't have quite so evident of a business model.

Google away. :P

Re:Denial works well here.

Google's reputation, however, is mighty squeaky clean, and until it is revealed just exactly what kind of information their computers can put together from your web habits (and what, exactly, they do with it), I have a feeling we'll be in denial about it for a very long time.

It isn't denial, it's personal experience.

Google has been turning out very useful products that pretty much do what they're supposed to. They've been doing some philanthropic stuff too. They give back to the community with their Summer of Code and things like that. Overall, my personal experiences regarding Google are positive. Thus far I do not have reason to distrust them inordinately. This doesn't mean that I'll blindly go along with anything and everything they do, but I don't question their every decision either.

By contrast, I've got a long history of frustration with Microsoft. Product after product released late and in buggy condition. Patches that break more than they fix. Hours of frustration trying to troubleshoot issues and track down fixes. Constant press releases about how wonderful the new version will be, and then most of the new features don't show up. I'm talking about a good 10+ years of frustration with Microsoft. So, naturally, I'm a bit skeptical when they announce a new product.

How long before the feds get involved?

I'm predicting [codemonkeyramblings.com] that Google's flu tracker is going to end up being used as an argument in favor of a federal data retention mandate if it turns out to be successful for the CDC. While DHS may have recently shown that datamining doesn't work on terrorists [wired.com], I'll bet that it would certainly work on certain classes of other criminals like sex offenders. How long before the DoJ starts down this path by saying, "hey Google, why don't you keep an eye on suspicious searches for us, and let us know if someone reaches a threshold of $X searches/month so we can see if they're bad dudes banging little kids." The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Think I'm paranoid? Then explain why the USA PATRIOT Act was ready to go so soon after 9-11. It's not like they were just waiting for a justification to present it to Congress...

Re:How long before the feds get involved?

How long before the DoJ starts down this path by saying, "hey Google, why don't you keep an eye on suspicious searches for us, and let us know if someone reaches a threshold of $X searches/month so we can see if they're bad dudes banging little kids."

Under the PATRIOT Act, any FBI officer could ask for this data, with a self written warrant, Google would be compelled to give them the information, AND IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL FOR GOOGLE TO TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT... EVEN UNDER OATH IN A COURT OF LAW.

So, this could already be happening I guess.

Re:How long before the feds get involved?

It has been admitted that the PATRIOT ACT was written before 9/11. Most of it was seperate bills that failed during the Clinton administration and that most Republicans opposed at the time. Funny how things "change" when you get into power.

Lawrence Lessig, a Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that "There's going to be an i-9/11 event" which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an "i-Patriot Act" if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled "2018: Life on the Net", Lessig stated:

There's going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn't necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You've got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said "of course there is".

You can find that talk on google video.

On a flu related note, the google flu tracker really scares me. I pointed out in the discussion about it that Executive Order 13375 adds

(c) Influenza caused by novel or reemergent influenza viruses that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic

to Executive Order 13295 Relating to Certain Influenza Viruses and Quarantinable Communicable Diseases.

That simply means that our government can pre-emptively quarantine an area that may cause a pandemic. The language "reemergent" is also troubling to me since it has been admitted that they have recreated the 1918 flu virus.

the whole premise is cracked

The premise here is "if only we had known ahead of time, we would have done things differently". In the cases where we did know ahead of time, or enough people did, we still went ahead and did it anyway. *After* the Grand Banks fishery collapsed ... we continued to fish it. A few short years later ... we shut down the entire fishery due to lack of foresight and cooperation.

For some reason, I've never viewed Google as a particularly large threat. They seem to be using the data mining to sell a well targeted audience. Is there a Google service where I can pay to get dirt on my neighbors? There's two guys living out front I'd like to get rid of.

Like a bank, there is a business model to make a lot of money in a hurry by whisking all the deposits off to an island paradise. However, the business model where they maintaining the trust relationship with the fools who deposited in the first place pays better in the long run. When you get down to it, banks sell trust, and not much else.

Do we think our banks don't know a lot about us? If only we had known, we'd have never allowed banks to exist in the first place.

What's happening here is that with mass storage plummeting into the $/TB range, one way or another we were going to have to rethink our entire privacy and public information models rather dramatically.

If only we had known, we'd have never allowed Shugart to spin that first platter.

Re:

Do we think our banks don't know a lot about us? If only we had known, we'd have never allowed banks to exist in the first place.

The difference between banks and Google is that banks are heavily regulated under the law as to what information they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they can release it to. Google isn't.

Bogus

aspirin had never been discovered until now, it would have died in the lab and stand no chance of FDA approval

This argument is such a fallacy. If it was discovered today it would be considered an herbal supplement and they are not regulated by the FDA. If it was considered a drug patent trolls would sue for it and it would still get marketed since it does work with little side effects. They would see the potential to make a lot of money.

Scroogled

There is actually a great short story about the idea of Google using its collected information for Homeland Security. The story is called "Scroogled". Good read. I'd link to it but I thought it more appropriate to have you Google the title.

Your choice

3 main ways to google to get info about you:
- You publish that information in your site (i.e. you give it to everyone, google included)
- You give that information to google (i.e. you store your mail/documents/etc in google, or interact with your google account with google sites, like in maps, search history, etc)
- You interact with google sites not with your account, but interact anyways. That could include google ads, or the search engine itself (even if is embedded in your browser), or visiting sites using google analytics.

In the first two is your choice to give them your information. And if the last one worries you, using alternative search engines or using extensions like NoScript will solve that problem.

The problem with google is that give you too much ways, most of them very handy, to store your information, and is in very good positions to combine all that sources. You can pick all yahoo services and be in more or less the same situation, but in yahoo. Or in lesser degree, can fall in the same with Microsoft, Facebook, your mail provider, etc(even slashdot could fit in that category eventually)