Google's New Privacy Policy Ramps Up Data Scraping

Google's Privacy Policy Update Sparks Controversy

Google recently updated its privacy policy, effective from July 1, 2023. The changes give the tech giant the right to scrape user-generated content in order to develop and train its AI tools.

The policy states:

Hiding behind the hyperlink on “publicly accessible sources” is the full scope of the changes.

It reads,

“For example, we may collect information that's publicly available online or from other public sources to help train Google's AI models and build products and features, like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities.”

The issue that privacy-minded people have with the new policy is that it suggests that Google can collect and utilize data from any part of the public web.

It's not limited to Google-owned services or even websites using Google's tools.

So, what does this mean for internet users?

Well, it implies that a person's online musings could potentially be utilized by Google's chatbots in unpredictable and incomprehensible ways. If you post to Facebook, believing that you are only sharing your thoughts with the Facebook community, Google's new policy suggests otherwise.

Of course, this is just a form of data scraping, which, in itself is nothing new.

But with this Google privacy policy update, they are taking the practice to a whole new level, raising concerns about copyright infringement and privacy violations.

Social media platforms react

In light of the policy change news, Twitter and Reddit took steps to protect content on their platforms by turning off free access to their APIs.

This resulted in breaking third-party tools and caused angry protests by Reddit moderators who caused a subreddit blackout by taking communities “private”.

Hackers even joined the fight, stating that unless Reddit reversed its API decision (and paid a $4.5 million ransom) that they would release 80GB of stolen Reddit data.

Elon Musk jumped on the data scraping bandwagon, claiming this was the reason for the decision to limit the number of Tweets a non-blue user can see.

New data scraping territory

What makes the Google privacy policy update noteworthy is its blatant disregard for boundaries. Most privacy policies are put in place to limit a company's data-collecting scope to information that is shared with the company directly (or at least indirectly via third parties).

But with this new wording in place, Google is very openly giving itself the whole world-wide-web as its data scraping playground.

Is it legal?

Good question. This “free for all” activity might not be legal, as OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT will soon be finding out. They are being sued for doing the exact same thing that Google's new privacy policy describes.

The central claim to the OpenAI suit is that the entire business model of OpenAI and its products are based on theft.

Or as it puts it, “stolen private information, including personally identifiable information, from hundreds of millions of internet users, including children of all ages, without their informed consent or knowledge.”

But until the legality of such widespread data scraping is finally agreed upon, Google's privacy policy update is just another reminder to not trust the company, and be extra careful about what we share online.

Read more: 6 Things You Should Never Share on Social Media