While everyone loves a rags (okay not exactly rags for two middle-class Stanford grad students) to riches story and much of the chapters we read this week take us through Google’s journey to superstardom, what I found most interesting about this week’s reading was the chapter on Search, Privacy, Government and Evil. 

Speaking as a person who shreds every piece of mail that comes through my door and also has locks on my file cabinets, I find the notion that significant amounts of my personal information is available on the web terrifying.   The first thing I did after reading this chapter was to find out if my cell phone (which admittedly I have given to a few dodgy guys late in the night at a bar) can be traced to my address.   Good news is that cell phones don’t have quite the same easy tracability to your home address as a home phone number.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that there is a serious large amount of information out there about me.  Can’t someone take that information and maybe open a false credit card accoutnt or somehow get a line of credit in my name?  And what about the numerous times each month I enter my credit card data online, how risky is that?

These thoughts lead me to the ultimate question, where is the balance between convenience and security?  Most of us seem very willing and able to ignore the risk for the sake of convenience.  For people who are world travelers/workers it would be impossible (okay not impossible but really difficult and time consuming) to do their banking, money transfer, maintenance of home or rental properties without online banking and bill pay.  On a more personal note, as someone who is 6 feet tall I love the fact that I can try on a pair of trousers at the Gap, know they fit but are just 3 inches too short, then go home and order those exact trousers in long or tall online.  

So the ability to conduct online transactions has improved my style and image, and the convenience of online bill pay and banking has left me more free time to meet dodgy guys in bars but am I putting my financial health at risk?    Probably not that much considering the security that banks and online transactions sites have put in place.  But the fact that Google is tracking my transactions with every confirmation email I get into my gmail account for my online purchases or the fact that they know the name of my bank because of the monthly statement that comes to my gmail account means that some of my privacy has been handed over from the banks or stores to Google.  I am not as sure I feel quite as safe in their hands, despite their very kitsch company vision of Do No Evil. 

Bottom line I think we all need to make a personal decision between convenience of using the internet in every aspect of our life, knowing Google knows each and every step, and giving up some privacy.  I personally believe the culture of today’s youth is happy to give up privacy in the name of convenience and social networking.  In that case I do believe we all need to be just that more diligent at checking into our credit history regularly or finding out what’s out on the www about us.   This is no longer a vanitygoogle but a rational and pro-active way to ensure our safety and security.

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