If you care about the privacy of your personal data, you might as well throw away your smartphone and other devices and move to a cabin in the woods. There’s no real privacy anymore. Because big data companies like Google know everything about us. Even what we own, what we do, even what we might do in the future.
It’s comforting to think they don’t share this stuff with anyone, including the government, unless there’s a good reason, right? Well, think again. It turns out that the US government can order Google to give them all your information just because you watched a video on YouTube. Here are re the details…
Caught Watching: Authorities Target YouTube Viewers
According to recent reports, the US government recently asked Google to share personal information about some of its users. You might think these users are involved with crime after reading this. However, it’s impossible to know for sure because the authorities didn’t know the specific people they were targeting.
Instead, they wanted personal information from everyone who watched certain videos published between January 1 and 8, 2023. This information includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, what the users were doing on Google, and even their IP addresses. The whole reason for this mess is to catch someone online with the username “elonmuskwhm”.
This person is wanted for money laundering and running an illegal money transmitting business. To find him, authorities had undercover agents to send out tutorials via YouTube on mapping via drones and augmented reality software. You might think this is normal for catching criminals. But, the videos were public and for example on of them was watched by over 30,000 people.
That means the data of potentially tens of thousands of users was exposed through these videos, which were accessible to anyone, including you. This tactic raises questions about the balance between online investigations and user privacy. Unfortunately, Google had to disclose those data. That’s precisely why if privacy of personal data matters to you, the only thing you can do is to live in a hut deep in the forest.
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