Is Google Evesdropping?
Update: This is a repost from something I came across last month with a few edits and adds. I hasn’t seemed to get much coverage but I think it is something worth knowing about. I submitted it to Slashdot.org and it has been in pending status for 3 weeks. Most of my submissions to them receive a decision within hours. Are they sitting on this until they have more proof? Coming out with this on Slashdot would be a pretty big deal (I think). Google Talk users beware.
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I love Google. They provide me with advertising revenue, e-mail, and most of the “services” I offer. I became disconcerted yesterday when I came across a post on another blog that might implicate Google in the area of personal privacy. Here is what happened:
A fellow Google user was using the GoogleTalk application while chatting with a friend. This user has his own personal website that contains ads provided by Google (as does mine). During the chat, the user jokingly prompted his friend to click on his ads while he was viewing some picture of his new baby. It is against the Google AdSense terms of service (TOS) to solicit clicks in any form, so the user clearly violated (admittedly) the TOS. The part that threw up a red flag was the e-mail from Google the user received the next day. This is an excerpt from the chat and the e-mail message:
1:11 PM my buddy: oh csection yeah that takes a while, what was the weight?
me: http:// spanglenuts dot blogspot
there are some pics
8lbs 12.5 ounces
1:12 PM my buddy: yeah thats a good size
1:14 PM me: Ya, he’s cute.
1:15 PM my buddy: yeah very nice i’m lokking at the pics now
me: you can feel free to click on some ads. 
The following day(today), less than 24 hours later, I received an email about my Google Adsense Account Status. Here is the email. In bold are the highlights…
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Hello Google User (name removed for privacy),
It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). In the future, we may adjust your
payment for any days during which invalid clicks occurred in order to
properly credit advertisers for any invalid activity.As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks is strictly
prohibited. Invalid clicks include but are not limited to any clicks
that are generated through the use of robots, automated clicking tools,
manual clicks by a publisher on the publisher’s own web pages, or a
publisher encouraging others to click on his ads.
Looks to me like Google tracks what GoogleTalk users are chatting about. This conversation must have thrown up a red-flag.
Was this just a coincidence? What do you think about this invasion of privacy? What else might they be tracking? Does AOL, Yahoo!, Jabber, and MySpace do the same thing with their messaging clients? What implications might this have for personal communications over the Internet?
