ChrisPosterous

When does a company know too much about you on the internet. Is it when they can track your every internet search and site visit? Is it when they have access to every bit of personal information you entrusted to them when signing up for some of their services. If you have been worried about Facebook privacy recently, you may have started to move some or all of your online presence to someone like Google. But how much more secure is that?

The answer is not very. You see, recently, during my experimentation with Android, I made the mistake of downloading an app from their very "open" app store that provided Gmail New Mail notifications on my Android device (it changes the Gmail icon to show the number of unread messages). In order to get the app to work, I logged in to Gmail via this app and provided my email address and password.

About 3 days later I received a notice when logging into my account that someone had accessed my Gmail account from a Chinese IP Address. I immediately changed my password and hoped that nothing bad had happened that I could not yet see. But then I started looking at all the other stuff attached to my Gmail account login credentials - Google Profile, Google Buzz, Orkut, GTalk, Blogger - a lot of my online life now was potentially exposed and violated. 

There is definitely a risk in trusting a for-profit corporation with your personal information, especially when they provide their services for free. The contract you have with some of these companies can be devoid of an expectation of trust on their part. And your ability to recover from a serious breech may be hampered by the fact that you are not paying for the service (the "what did you expect for free" response).

This weekend, I spent a little time reviewing exactly how much time I spend on each of the services I use and exactly what I share. And I decided to make some changes. After a long relationship with Google, I have decided I simply have too many internet "eggs" in their basket. I have decided to kill off my Google Profile and Buzz account and to split out my mail to another service. Recently I have been disturbed by Google's unchecked growth and their lust to takeover my browser, my search experience and my social networking identity. At this point in time, I trust Twitter and Facebook more than I trust Google, and I am sure a lot of other folks feel that way too but are just too immersed (or maybe even afraid) to make their escape. So as of today, at least on my personal devices, I am not longer running Chrome, or Google Search, or GMail, or gChat or Buzz. I will continue to use Blogger as the backup to my Posterous, but that's is about it. At work, I will continue to use Chrome for the time being, but probably will probably switch back to Firefox when version 4 goes GM. I will report back soon on how this all goes, but right now, I feel like in a small way, I have taken back my corner of the net and locked the door behind me secure in the knowledge that someone else does not have a key.