Minnesota, USA -June 16, 2011 - There is no doubt that Google has been under fire when it comes to privacy issues. Now, it has a tactic to put that fire under the rug -so to speak. In its Dashboard, it features a tool referred to as the "Me on the Web"; it obviously masquerades as a privacy tool when in reality it does not much more than what Google did before. Although we cannot blame Google for its latest move out of desperation, it is important for us to understand what it is and is not doing for us; do not fall for the looks of this newest addition without knowing all of the facts.

 

First off, I would be lying to say that absolutely nothing about this Dashboard item is new; the convenient 'alert' tool is a new addition which can be customized to have alerts sent based on criteria that is selected like name, e-mail addresses, or other information that could be relevant to anyone's identity. In as cool as this may appear, it may not be of much help to those who are involved in a lot of internet activity because our names and information can appear a lot. Basically, the alerts that are received will reveal all the information that we already know is on the web.

 

Unfortunately, the rest of the services in "Me on the Web" are what was there for years. In as much as it may give a sense of security to those who do not know how to rid of the personal contents on the web that are undesirable, it does nothing more. It may be a good reminder for the material that you put up on the web that you do not safe guard in the way that you thought you did. However, the process of contacting webmasters and other such contacts remains the same. Basically, Google is not doing anything that you could not do yourself before.

It may seem ridiculous that our actual privacy is not any more protected than it was before. These 'steps' that Google is taking could be what we could do even without its 'alert' tool. It is simple to search your name and other information on multiple search engines and go through the process of getting rid of all the bad content. Actually, there are web services out there that will do this never-ending process for you and just for a small fee.

Perhaps this may be useful for the users who are entirely unaware of how search engines and websites work. Since people must create a profile to get access to this service, it becomes clear that Google may just want people to voluntarily give information that is accurate in the hopes that it could shed light on what is 'fact' or 'fiction'; the profile may get other 'inaccurate' information to go farther down on search results, but it does nothing more than that.