Product Description

What Does Google Know about You? And Who Are They Telling?

When you use Google’s “free” services, you pay, big time–with personal information about yourself. Google is making a fortune on what it knows about you…and you may be shocked by just how much Google does know. Googling Security is the first book to reveal how Google’s vast information stockpiles could be used against you or your business–and what you can do to protect yourself.

Unlike other books on Google hacking, this book covers information you disclose when using all of Google’s top applications, not just what savvy users can retrieve via Google’s search results. West Point computer science professor Greg Conti reveals the privacy implications of Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Google Groups, Google Alerts, Google’s new mobile applications, and more. Drawing on his own advanced security research, Conti shows how Google’s databases can be used by others with bad intent, even if Google succeeds in its pledge of “don’t be evil.”

• Uncover the trail of informational “bread crumbs” you leave when you use Google search
• How Gmail could be used to track your personal network of friends, family, and acquaintances
• How Google’s map and location tools could disclose the locations of your home, employer, family and friends, travel plans, and intentions
• How the information stockpiles of Google and other online companies may be spilled, lost, taken, shared, or subpoenaed and later used for identity theft or even blackmail
• How the Google AdSense and DoubleClick advertising services could track you around the Web
• How to systematically reduce the personal information you expose or give away

This book is a wake-up call and a “how-to” self-defense manual: an indispensable resource for everyone, from private citizens to security professionals, who relies on Google.

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xix

About the Author xxi

Chapter 1: Googling 1

Chapter 2: Information Flows and Leakage 31

Chapter 3: Footprints, Fingerprints, and Connections 59

Chapter 4: Search 97

Chapter 5: Communications 139

Chapter 6: Mapping, Directions, and Imagery 177

Chapter 7: Advertising and Embedded Content 205

Chapter 8: Googlebot 239

Chapter 9: Countermeasures 259

Chapter 10: Conclusions and a Look to the Future 299

Index 317

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #490381 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

About the Author

Greg Conti is an assistant professor of computer science at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. His research includes security data visualization, usable security, information warfare, and web-based information disclosure. He is the author of Security Data Visualization (No Starch Press, 2007) and has been featured in IEEE Security & Privacy magazine, Communications of the ACM, and IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications magazine. He has spoken at a wide range of academic and hacker conferences, including Black Hat, DEFCON, and the Workshop on Visualization for Computer Security (VizSEC). Conti runs the open source security visualization project RUMINT. His work can be found at www.gregconti.com/ and www.rumint.org/.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book that explores the many security risks around Google and other search engines
It has been suggested that if one was somehow able to change history so that aspirin had never been discovered until now, it would have died in the lab and stand no chance of FDA approval. In a report from the Manhattan Institute, they write that no modern drug development organization would touch it. Similarly, if we knew the power that Google would have in 2008 with its ability to aggregate and correlate personal data, it is arguable that various regulatory and privacy bodies would never allow it to exist given the extensive privacy issues.

In a fascinating and eye-opening new book Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?, author Greg Conti explores the many security risks around Google and other search engines. Part of the problem is that in the rush to get content onto the web, organizations often give short shrift to the security and privacy of their data. At the individual level, those who make use of the innumerable and ever expanding amount of Google free services can end up paying for those services with their personal information being compromised, or shared in ways they would not truly approve of; but implicitly do so via their acceptance of the Google Terms of Service.

While the book focuses specifically on Google, the security issues detailed are just as relevant to Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask and the more than 50 other search engines.

Until now, Google and security have often not been used together. As an example, my friend and SEO guru Shimon Sandler has a blog around search engine optimization (SEO). In the over three years that his blog has been around, my recent post on The Need for Security in SEO was the first on topic of SEO security. Similar SEO blogs also have a very low number (and often no) articles on SEO and security. Sandler notes that when he mentions privacy issues around search to his clients, it is often the first time they have thought of it.

The book opens with the observation that Google's business model is built on the prospect of providing its services for free. From the individual user's perspective, this is a model that they can live with. But the inherent risk is that the services really are not completely free; they come at the cost of the loss of control of one's personal information that they share with Google.

The book lists over 50 Google services and applications which collect personal information. From mail, alerts, blogging, news, desktop, images, maps, groups, video and more. People are placing a great deal of trust into Google as each time they use a Google service, they are trusting the organization to safeguard their personal information. In chapter 5, the book lists over 20 stated uses and advantages of Google Groups, and the possible information disclosure risks of each.

In the books 10 chapters, the author provides a systematic overview of how Google gets your personal data and what it does with it. In chapter 3, the book details how disparate pieces of data can be aggregated and mined to create extremely detailed user profiles. These profiles are invaluable to advertisers who will pay Google dearly for such meticulous user data. This level of personal data aggregation was impossible to obtain just a few years ago, given the lack of computing power, combined with the single point of user data. The book notes that this level of personalization, while golden to advertisers, is a privacy anathema.

Chapter 6 is particularly interesting in that it details the risks of using Google Maps. Conti explains that the privacy issue via the use of Google Maps is that it combines disclosure risks of search and connects it to mapping. You are now sharing geographic locations and the associated interactions. By clicking on a link in a Google map, the user discloses and strengthens the link between the search they performed and what they deemed as important in the result. By aggregating source IP addresses and destinations searches, Google can easily ascertain confidential data.

After detailing over 250 pages of the risks of Google and related services, Chapter 9 is about countermeasures. Short of simply not using the services, the book notes that there is no clear solution for protecting yourself and company from web-based information disclosure. Nonetheless, the chapter lists a number of things that can be done to reduce the threat. Some are easier, some are harder; but they can ultimately add up to a significant layer of protection. Chapter 9 details 11 specific steps that help users appreciate the magnitude of their disclosures and make informed decisions about which search services to use.

Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? is an important book given that far too many people do not realize how much personal information they are disclosing on a daily basis. An important point that the book makes is that small information disclosures are not truly small when they are aggregated over the course of years. Advances in data mining and artificial intelligence are magnifying the importance of the threat, all under the guise of improving the end-user experience. The book emphasizes the need to evaluate the short-term computing gains with the long-term privacy losses.

The final chapter notes that apathy is the enemy. As a user becomes aware of the magnitude of the threat, they will see it grow every day. But the next step is to take action. Be it with technical countermeasures, taking your business where privacy is better supported, or petitioning lawmakers.

As to the underlying question, "how much does Google know about you?", the answer is that it is a colossal amount, far more than most people realize. For anyone who uses the Internet, Googling Security should be on their list of required reading. The risks that Google and other search engines present are of great consequence and can't be overlooked. If not, privacy could slowly be a thing of the past.

resistance is futile
In buying this book on amazon, and leaving a review on amazon, the net knows that much more about me.

This book addresses one of those game theory scenarios, where whats good for the collective (maximum data) is bad for the individual (loss of privacy). The rational response is to let everyone else fully disclose and capitalize on that, while maintaining your own privacy.

I probably knew most of the material in this book beforehand, being in tech, but its unlikely I can abide by the recommendations. My Google RSS Reader is loaded up with 100+ feeds, some of which spool up 100 articles per day. Google Calender is best of breed. And Google Email offers POP/IMAP for free, whereas Yahoo email does not. All three of these "killer apps" work best when logged in continuously. So I login from home and work, and they stay logged in 24x7. As a result, whenever something pops in my head, and I do a search, Google is able to track that, and tie that to my name because my name is tied to my email.

I may switch to NewsGator or Bloglines, and go back to Yahoo email/ Calender. And I may code up something on my linux firewall to switch its MAC / IP address on a weekly basis. And I may ditch my Grandcentral, with the cost that I will have to give out my real cell phone number to merchants. But I probably won't.

I was able to muster a small pyrrhic victory, and steer clear of the G1 (google) phone. Which is integrated tightly with Google, such connecting with a Gmail address, and all the contacts associated with that email address.

Also, re. chaffing countermeasure, with Firefox TrackMeNot is interesting. I tried that out sometime back, and had it cranked up to some number of queries per minute. It wasn't long before Google (temporarily) blocked my IP address with some error message. And I just noticed that I have TrackMeNot turned on at work at a rigorous "chaffing" pace, and it was not disabled. I assume that is because Google cannot easily turn off chaff coming out of a big corp, thats behind a firewall/ NAT. This might be something of a loophole. I will have to explore this further.

Fails to scare a paranoid
I think the book has good information (as other reviewers pointed out) and I enjoyed reading it. However, as I was reading the book, I developed an impression that this was a book meant to scare the reader into some kinda behavior change. In other words, I felt that the book was written to highlight the risks, to explain why given somebody so much information about your activities is a risky, bad thing and that you should do something differently.

Despite the fact that I enjoyed the book, I think this is where it fails. As somebody who works in security, I consider myself to be pretty paranoid, but the book failed even to scare me! After reading it, I did not become afraid of Google at all. The author highlights some of the presumed risks, but he fails to present scenarios that make the dangers come alive. So he ends up with a "non-scary Scary Tale."
For example, when talking about ads, and especially targeted ads, the book suggests that such consumer profiling is scary, but doesn't explain how and why.

To conclude: the book presents a good story of how much Google knows about you, but my impression was that the risks are not made to be scary enough and few resulting behavior changes are suggested. It goes a little like "OMG, you CAN be hit by the car if you cross the street!" At times while reading it I thought that "you have no privacy, get over it" trumps what's written in the book.