Google announced on Friday that it would sell users’ ads including the users’ names, pictures, ratings and comments across the Web.
The search engine company confirmed that it will be making minor updates. These “minor updates” are related to endorsements of marketers’ products in which personal information of users endorsing, commenting and rating products will be shown all over the Web.
As pleasing as it may sound for the advertising sector, Google’s latest update is also the latest example of how Web companies continue to make profit out of their users’ personal information.
In contrary, Google said that they will be offering their users a more personalized service as part of the updates. However, privacy advocates oppose the idea as it they are bothered on how Web companies plan to display or post users’ personal information in ways the authors did not intend to.
Dr. Deborah C. Peel, psychoanalyst and founder of Patient Privacy Rights, an advocacy group, told New York Times, “People expect when they give information, it’s for a single use, the obvious one. That’s why the widening of something you place online makes people unhappy. It feels to them like a breach, a boundary violation.”
“We set our own boundaries. We don’t want them set by the government or Google or Facebook," she added.
Despite our own privacy preferences, Google is moving towards making most of its users’ personal information displayed publicly.
Google has already sent a notice about these changes as well as the updates on its terms of service that will permit them to include the user’s profile information, picture, comments and ratings they have made in ads on Google Search, YouTube or Google Plus.
The minor updates will be rolled out on November 11. Users will be able to show “shared endorsements” on Google sites over the Web which can be visible to roughly 1 billion Internet users.
