Dr. Mercola: Eliminate Google From Your Life

Eliminate Google From Your Life:

Story at-a-glance

  • As one of the greatest monopolies that ever existed, Google poses a unique threat to anyone concerned about health, food, supplements and their ability to obtain truthful information about these and other issues
  • While not the sole threat to privacy, Google is one of the greatest. It catches every single thing you do online when using a Google-based feature, and builds powerful personality profiles of all users
  • Google’s data collection on users is said to be primarily for marketing purposes, but the profiles could just as easily be used for more nefarious and liberty-infringing purposes
  • Aside from monopolizing the internet, Google also has a strong presence in childhood education, health care and even the food industry, and is engaged in social engineering pursuits, as well as artificial intelligence and military applications
  • Monopolies like Google pose a serious threat to democracy and basic liberties. Take back control by boycotting Google-based services, including Gmail, Google search engines, Google Docs and Chrome

By Dr. Mercola

Google, by far one of the greatest monopolies that ever existed, poses a unique threat to anyone concerned about health, supplements, food and your ability to obtain truthful information about these and other issues. And, while not the sole threat to privacy, Google is definitely one of the greatest. Over time, Google has positioned itself in such a way that it’s become deeply embedded and involved in your day-to-day life.

It’s important to realize that Google catches every single thing you do online if you’re using a Google-based feature, and that the data is being used to build powerful personality profiles. As previously reported by Gawker:1

“Every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser is watched by the company. ‘We don’t need you to type at all,’ [Google co-founder Eric] Schmidt once said. ‘We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.’”

How these profiles — with capabilities akin to mindreading — are ultimately put to use is anyone’s guess. The main purpose of this data collection is said to be for marketing purposes, allowing companies to target users with a known interest in certain activities or products. This is bad enough, but the profiles could just as easily be used for more nefarious and liberty-infringing purposes, and we’re already seeing some evidence that this is taking place.

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Google Chrome Bug Lets Websites Listen to Your Conversations

Google Chrome Bug Lets Websites Listen to Your Conversations (IBT, Jan 23, 2014):

A bug in Google’s Chrome web browser enables malicious websites to activate your microphone and spy on conversations that happen next to your computer, even after you’ve left the website.

Tal Ater, a web developer in Israel discovered the exploit while working on a JavaScript Speech Recognition library called annyang.

The internet giant seems dismissive of the problem, however.

In a statement, Google said: “We’ve reinvestigated and still believe there is no immediate threat, since a user must first enable speech recognition for each site that requests it.”

In a video he filmed with a voice-over artist, Ater shows how websites that legitimately turn on your microphone to enable speech recognition, can continue to record and listen in on conversations in the background even after you have left the website.

His video shows that every word of the script the voice-over artist was reading aloud has been recorded by Chrome’s speech recognition feature, even after the website has been closed.

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