Google account. Should I/shouldn't I?

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I like Skol

A Minging Manc...
First of all, where has the old I.T tech questions section gone?

Something came up today and I was at the point of registering for a Google account but backed off at the last moment. I have always resisted registering as I have a deep, yet probably unfounded, suspicion that doing so will unlock Pandora's box and allow unfettered access and intrusion in to my private life and my family's web browsing.

Am I right to be suspicious or am I worrying about nothing? What are the advantages of registering (I just wanted to download some fun/addictive game apps that a family member showed me) and what are the pitfalls (there must be some)?

Any advice from fellow CC'rs will be gratefully received. :thumbsup:
 

Biker Joe

Über Member
Every one at our house has had a Google account for some considerable time.
No problems to date.
 

Mr Haematocrit

msg me on kik for android
If you have a gmail account, g++ account, youtube account you already have a Google account.
Not a big deal IMHO as Google are pretty open with the privacy policy.. They are not shady like facebook
 

slowmotion

Quite dreadful
Location
lost somewhere
I don't. Mr Google is not to be trusted. He drove down your street harvesting data about your wireless network settings, FFS.

signed... Mr Paranoid

{ and by the way, don't get me on the subject of the Cloud.....}
 

Hacienda71

Mancunian in self imposed exile in leafy Cheshire
I have a Google account. I only use it for my phone apps. I have two separate non Google email accounts for work and personal respectively.
 

Mr Haematocrit

msg me on kik for android
I don't. Mr Google is not to be trusted. He drove down your street harvesting data about your wireless network settings, FFS.

signed... Mr Paranoid

{ and by the way, don't get me on the subject of the Cloud.....}

You can't escape Google, even if you try. During 2013 Google had an outage for two minutes and traffic on the web dropped by 40% which shows just how much data is handled by Googles network.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/17/google_outage/

google_outage_graph.png
 

Mr Haematocrit

msg me on kik for android
Yeah, but why make it easy for them?

You know googles not evil right?
They buy a lot of web tech and open source it, they give sheds loads of services and applications away for free like Android and basically fund Mozilla Firefox.
You can download the full source code for Android, you can't say the same for any other Tablet or smart phone OS. So you can see for yourself what its doing.

Google has always been upfront that their business is targeted advertising and to do this they need to profile people. Without adverts the web will become a paid experience.
 
Getting harder to escape some sort of global integrated type account now, whether that be Google, Microsoft or Apple due to the integration with smartphones.
I can look up a route on the laptop, then it appears as a card on the phone. Hell, I even go to Brazil and the phone tells me what the weather is (hot & sunny usually) even though I'm only connecting to a hotel or ships wifi. I actually tend to be more cautious over which wifi networks I use rather than Google as you can connect up to spoof networks.
 
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