Personal Data

In a landmark ruling in Europe, a privacy regulator has ruled that IP addresses constitute private data. This is very interesting and long overdue. These days before every Google search I fear the cookie that Google has on my computer. I’ve disabled Google Web History, but I know they’re still gathering data! I could set firefox to delete the cookie after every session as I do with most other cookies, but (a) I like to stay signed in to reader, gmail, etc. and (b) Google can still mine a lot of data from my searches while I’m signed in. (Aside: Perhaps I need to start using different browsers for searches)!.

Coming back to privacy, I talk of Google but its true of anyone. Even if someone doesn’t use private data right now, there’ll always be an evil project manager who’ll wonder why they never thought of using it - its an obvious gold mine. The amount of data someone can collect about you with just a cookie (and an IP Address) is freaky! Just look at the cookies stored by your browser (beyond the necessary authentication cookies) to know how many companies love to collect data!

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