MIDDLEBURGH

MIDDLEBURGH FREAKS

WAS I PISSED!! YOU BET! I have just discovered that YouTube was holding my viewing and search history for the LAST 6 YEARS!! I had read an article which suggested checking out Google Dashboard ....so I did....and was shocked!!!.

In truth I was more upset with myself for not being on top of this rather than with Google/YouTube although I have grave concerns about the depth of data held and its accessibility. In fairness Dashboard is a quite laudable attempt by Google at transparency and does provide tools to manage the data. In practical terms I immediately deleted both my YouTube viewing and search history, switched off (paused) future data capture and changed my account password.

My concern stem from the simple question "who benefits and how (from holding this data)?" As far as I can see there are four potential "beneficiaries"

• myself
  
• YouTube/Google
  
• YouTube/Google business partners
  
• "Profilers"
  

these arguments can be made

• I could access my search and viewing history if it is available as and when I needed ?? Bollocks!! if there was a video i wanted to see again I could bookmark it locally and if i wanted to find something I saw previously I could search my browser history. And it's not a lot of use YouTube storing data if you don't know about it!!
  
• You tube could improve the quality of your search results based on what you had previously searched for and viewed ie taking into account your "interests". Now I can understand this logic and how some users might see this as a legitimate benefit. Personally I don't! Firstly 6 year old history will not be relevant to what anyone is searching for today - so that is not a valid reason to keep it !! Secondly why "use" more recent history? If I do a search, I would reasonably expect the search engine to return results relevant to the search arguments input only and I simply do not expect OR WANT the results to be modified based on previous searches etc. Its up to me to craft my search arguments appropriately not YouTube (or any other search engine) to adopt the approach that we know what you entered but based on what you searched for/viewed previously we think these results are more relevant. Arguably it might be acceptable if suggested results were separately displayed... but that not how the YouTube UI is built....
  
• YouTube is a commercial operation and by improving users' experience based on users history it will increase view rates and the opportunity to monetize those visit either by placing relevant advertising on screens or promoting subscription based channels. Implicitly these benefit You tube business partners in that adverts bring click throughs and revenue opportunities as do signups for paid subscription services. However why can't this done anonymously ie abstract view/search history and consolidate/hold based on user demographics. I can't see the value of holding data at user level and I don't accept the premise that you need to hold source data in order to support future analytical requirements. There are only so many ways to read data
  
• Statutory authorities may have a legitimate interest in identifying users who search for or view "inappropriate content eg would be/actual terrorists, pedophiles and other criminals eg people who post videos of themselves speeding , snuff movies, not so happy slapping movies , pornography or other similar content etc . Whilst I approve in principle of tracking down such miscreants I believe it should be content driven supported by an authorized warrant ie who has looked at this content, who put this content up etc. And if authorities wanted to see what else a user put up , viewed or searched for access should also be controlled by a warrant.
  

  My issue is with Google/YouTube providing a consolidated user centric view through Dashboard is this. I have no confidence that the my account password has not been /will not be cracked. This opens the possibility that someone may access my history and exploit it against me or my family. Now as it happens I checked my history carefully before deleting it and there was nothing in there I would be ashamed of etc.... but that's not the point. By saving history and making it easily accessible in one place YouTube/Google exposes a user to a potential risk.
  

I tend to be of the same opinion as John Mcaffe who "issued a call to arms against Google during the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. He said, “Google … would like us to believe that if we have nothing to hide, we should not mind if everybody knows everything that we do. If everybody knew everything about everybody else, what would human behavior become? We cannot have intrusions into our lives and still have freedom. And freedom is all I have. And it’s all you have, if you think about it.”"

So I thought ... F**K 'EM NO HISTORY HERE!! with the exception of the view history where other people have viewed my videos. I left that switched on even though 2 were of a political nature, mocking Nigel Farage (YES I AM A EUROPHILE AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS IT !!)

Labels: Google Dashboard, YouTube

Posted at 8/23/2014 02:35:00 pm by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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