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Can Google be trusted?

7K views 29 replies 18 participants last post by  Watchingtheweasels 
#1 ·
Thinking long and hard about a Chromebook, I began to ponder how Google can be trusted, and know they do care somewhat about users' privacy, but have gotten into some tussles over privacy issues and bouts with the FCC.

I wonder also how secure this whole cloud computing idea can be. How easy is it to bypass the security on this? Can it do any serious work, like video editing? Thanks.
 
#4 ·
Run fast and run far. ;)

But yea, from the point of privacy, this "computer" is a bad idea. I mean, who came up with this? Why would it be good? Good for whom?

I am old fashioned, but I think I need my data right here. It's my data. It needs to exist in my room. (Says I while my calendar is online and all my emails are as well.... and you guessed it, on Gmail.) But still, I think rather than to be a user friendly idea, it's one of those things to tell us sharing is good, sharing is safe, sharing is NORMAL.

Just the idea of stripping you of a normal harddrive with your own stuff, it's not a matter of cost for you these days, it's a matter of THEY wanting YOUR data and they came up with a bright way getting it!

What word is cloud really? Even the word in itself causes me paranoia. ;) It's like they want us to believe our data is an abstraction, when in fact it is on THEIR servers, and to which they have full access.

Caught me on a bad day here.
 
#7 ·
A while back there was an article on the merger/cooperation of google and like 17 other companies. I place zero faith and trust in them all. As for cloud, it just sounds like keeping your money in someone else's bank account. It may be fine for contact info and some general documents but on the whole I wouldn't put anything out there I would want to keep the world from seeing...
 
#8 ·
About a year ago I gave google the boot. Changed my default search engine to duckduckgo.com (they dont track your searches) and moved all my email to mail.com. Is it as convenient as google? No. Is it more private than google? Maybe. But I do think that the search engine and mail provider I use are smaller and are not as much in bed with the .gov.

The funny thing is that I am as squeaky clean as they come and have nothing to hide. I guess I really just dont trust google.


V.
 
#14 ·
No giant corporation can be completely trusted.

There's no problem with the hardware in a Chromebook, but I would not use any operating system that wasn't completely open source. So, I might own a Chromebook, but I would quickly put a Linux or BSD operating system on it.

Cloud storage is as secure as you make it. Cloud just means a computer somewhere else. If you encrypt your stuff on your machine before uploading it to the cloud, then anyone else who grabs it will have a pile of useless garbage, because they can't decrypt it.

Chromebooks are not powerful enough for most intensive video editing tasks, but I don't know exactly what you have in mind.
 
#20 ·
If you don't want to keep data locally on a portable computer because it might be stolen a "private cloud" via a VPN (Virtual Private Network) would be best the only weak link being the ISP (Internet service provider).
Granted VPN routers are expensive & you'd need a server or NAS device.
Not sure what type of video editing you're doing but the more advanced stuff usually requires more powerful hardware.
If you can process data locally the response time will be better, even you have really fast Internet.
 
#23 ·
I have nothing to hide. With that in mind. Under protest and privacy I won't even use their search engine anymore. They seem to have sold out.
 
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#26 ·
If you want an eye opener get the extension "Collusion" from Mozilla Firefox. You can see who is tracking you in real time. As I type this Google.com and Google-analytics.com is tracking me among others.

I closed all my google accts when it was revealed that they were working for Obama and making millions doing it.
 
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