All Your Data Are Belong To Us

Concerned about Facebook’s use of your private data? Consider this – while a lot of attention has been given in the past year to Facebook’s aggressive push to capture more and more data about users, Google has (more or less) managed to fly under the radar as it embedded itself into the entire fabric of the entire Internet.

Google is watching you right now

The amount of information that Google collects from your web browsing session is staggering. Yet we don’t hear as much backlash against Google, largely in part because the data collection happens behind the scenes with most users unaware of how frequently they’re sending data to Google.

The guys at Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab have developed a clever browser plug-in that demonstrates this by sounding an alarm every time data is sent to Google from a web site. Watch this video to see just how deeply Google has become entrenched in most web sites:

Click here to watch the video on Vimeo.

Privacy issues and the local church

Sharing of personal data has become the “cost of doing business” of the web. It is a significant issue for churches who are looking to use their web sites and social media tools to do ministry online. Here’s a snapshot a 2,000+ member church’s top concerns about using social networks .
This data was collected as part of an audience profile I recently did (contact me if you’re interested in conducting this type of research for your church or non-profit).

While the data is unique for this church, it does highlight an important point. One in three (36 percent) members of this church believe that social networks expose their private information to others. Significantly more people people are concerned about privacy than about wasting time online. Church leaders need to be prepared to address the privacy concerns of their members.

I’d love to hear what you think. Were you aware of how integrated into the fabric of the Internet Google has become? Does this concern you? Why or why not?