Google is Spying on Your Web Browser – Tech Tuesday

A few days ago, it was revealed that Google was by passing privacy policies in Apple's Safari web browser. Some privacy advocates and members of Congress are calling for Google to answer why they were doing it. Now, it has been revealed that Google is doing the same with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. So is Google starting to turn to the "Dark Side"? What happened to their motto of "Don't Be Evil"?

Basically, your web browser has a set of rules setup so that websites that place cookies, small files with data, on your computer, don't track where you are going online and what you are doing if you don't want them to. It's like walking into a store and an employee follows you around the mall when you leave the store, watching every place you go and what you do. This is kind of what Google was doing. Even if the settings in your web browser said to not track you.

Microsoft started checking when they saw the news break about Safari, and they did find that Google was doing the same thing. But Google is countering, that Microsoft is using a system that is outdated and impractical. A majority of websites out there, no longer use the system Microsoft uses. But to me the damage has been done, with Google being caught. So the question is, are other sites doing the same? Where is the data going and what is it being used for outside of advertising?

But in this day and age, aren't we pretty much aware we're being tracked? Even if we say we don't want to be? There are settings and policies in our software and on our computers to stop these kinds of things from happening, yet websites and coders, find ways around it. So what would it take for these practices to stop? Probably a major lawsuit, which doesn't seem to be on the horizon, anytime soon. Plus, something like that, would drastically change the digital landscape of the Internet.

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