Google: Big brother is watching you (The Brunei Times)

Published in the July 27, 2011 issue of The Brunei Times

Jennee Grace U Rubrico
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

SO YOU now have a Google+ account. Congratulations on being one of 18 million subscribers as of July 24 who got an invitation to the most exclusive social network party in ages.

Google which has had its share of flops since the launch of Gmail in 2004 is back on its game with its by-invitation-only strategy for Google+. Unlike the other social network, where anyone with an email address and Internet connection can sign up, Google+ is - for now, at least-restricted to the elite millions who have the power to decide if a hapless non-user should be given a pass to the party. Sigil of privacy
Never mind if, based on July 22 statistics from analysts, website Findpeopleonplus.com, most of the subscribers are engineers, software developers, web developers, programmers or other people who work with computers and the Internet. And never mind if Google itself tops the list of companies with the most number of employees signed up to the social network, at 9,704. According to Google, the social network which was rolled out on June 28 had been growing by two million subscribers per day until recently. Sooner or later, there's bound to be a demographic in which we mere mortals could belong.
Google+'s draw - apart from its exclusivity - is the control a user has over his account. Under the beta version, a user has sole control over what posts appear on one's wall - erm, stream. Should he wish to post incriminating photos of himself on his stream for everyone to see, that is his prerogative. His sister, who may derive pleasure in embarrassing him in front of his friends, will not have the same privilege. Not on his stream, at least.
There is also Circles, which has been touted as the sigil of privacy in a realm where it is thought to be non-existent. By assigning people to circles, users control who can see a particular post which is great, because people who may not be interested in knowing what book you've read recently would not have to know that you've just finished Bridge on the River Kwai.
But the real power of Circles is that it filters posts that come from others. This is important for a social network that doesn't require someone's consent to be included in someone else's network. If your ex has decided to put you in one of his circles in a malicious attempt to get you to read updates on his love life, his efforts will be in vain as long as you don't put him in any of your circles. He gets your public updates, and you get a notification that an update from him is waiting in your "incoming" stream. But you can always decide to ignore the notice. If this doesn't work for you, you can always block him, and neither of you would be getting the other's posts.
But while Google+ protects you from others, it does not protect you from Google itself. Like it or not, the social network is yet another platform from which the Internet giant could cull information about its users.
The thing about Google is that its services are integrated, and a user's information is shared by most of the platforms. Using Google's services is like giving the Internet giant permission to take your fingerprints and trace your activities. With all the data we have been feeding Google through Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, Chrome, Reader, Google Docs, Calendar, Buzz, and now Google+, it is not farfetched for a conspiracy theorist to think of it as the real world's equivalent of Eagle Eye's ARIIA, the omniscient, omnipotent super-computer tasked with gathering intelligence from all over the world.
Information on everyone
For all we know, Google has already gathered enough information on everyone to rule the world. But maybe not.
How does Google use data from users? "We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services," it says in its terms of service.
For Google+, "we will record information about your activity such as posts you comment on and the other users with whom you interact in order to provide you and other users with a better experience on Google services".
It adds that information provided by others - such as people who put you in circles, or tag you in photos-are also collected to be used as aggregate statistics about Google+ activity and shared "with the public, our users, and partners, such as publishers, app developers, or connected sites".
Governments are aware that Google is sitting on a treasure trove of information and have been asking its help. Google complies.
"We receive requests from government agencies around the world to provide information about users of our services and products," it says, adding these "primarily cover requests in criminal matters".
Criminal investigation
"We can't always be sure that a request necessarily relates to a criminal investigation, however, so there are likely a small number of requests that fall outside of this category," it adds.
There have always been provisions in Google's terms of service that have caused discomfort among users; but resisting the Internet giant would be futile. Short of committing cyber hara-kiri, there is no way to avoid the omniscient Big Brother.
In any case, Google users seem to have already factored this in. Gmail users, especially, have had an earlier encounter with privacy issues - and have kept using the service since.
I console myself with the thought that having a virtual fingerprint is just like having a real one. Unless a need arises for that fingerprint to be located, it remains in the dark recesses of the storage rooms. So I convince myself: There is no need to be afraid.
Besides, with 18 million Google+ users and more Gmail subscribers, there are surely people with more colourful lives than mine who would occupy the time of Google, and that of the powers-that-be.
And if it comes down to it, cyber hara-kiri is always an option, and I can rest assured that Google+ won't retain my data. But it always bodes well to remember, before putting up a Google+ post: your parents may not see it, but Big Brother is watching.
The views are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Brunei Times. The Brunei Times

Confessions of an FB-shunning geek (The Brunei Times)

Published in the June 22, 2011 issue of The Brunei Times

Jennee Grace U Rubrico

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

MY COUNTRY has once been called the social networking capital of the world.

A study released last March and quoted by Yahoo! News reveals that 95 per cent of the people in the Philippines who have access to the Internet are on social networking sites.Mark Zuckerberg, should he choose to do so, can undoubtedly rule the land. The same survey shows that of those who have Internet access, 93.9 per cent have a Facebook account, making the Philippines the market with the highest penetration for the Harvard dropout's online Frankenstein.
This means that as of March, more than nine out of 10 people with Internet access in the Philippines had a Facebook account. It also means that had I been living there, I would have been one of the six people in every 100 who didn't have one.
I had known that there were only a handful of us who have fought the pressure to open a Facebook account. Every member of my family has one, and so does every single one of my friends and colleagues. Over the years, I've gotten hundreds of invitations to join Facebook from friends, family, co-workers, and long-forgotten people I might have met at one time or another.
I just didn't think there were this few of us in the resistance movement. My refusal to join the social networking site is not due to being an anti-social netizen. I created my little nook in cyberspace before it became as pervasive as it is now. I had an email address at Rocketmail before Yahoo! bought it over to kill it and a decade before Gmail was rolled. I was a chatter when usernames were called handles, when BBS (bulletin board systems) still existed, Telnet chat was the rage, and mIRC was just starting. I had an instant messaging account with ICQ on the year it was rolled out, and my handle was an eight-digit number.
I was talking to friends and relatives who were oceans away through the Internet before Skype had come into existence.
I think that my online persona has better social skills than the real me.
At various times, I've owned an account on Friendster, Multiply, Blogger, Livejournal and Shelfari. When Twitter and Tumblr came along, I've opened accounts in those too. I am aware that Facebook has been used as a catalyst for change. And I have, on a number of occasions, wished that I had an account so I could check on family, particularly when calamities strike and telephone lines are down.
But five years after the social network was opened to the world, I have managed to remain a Facebook virgin. I have come to regard this as a lifestyle choice.
Privacy issues make opting out the easy choice. My chief deterrent was Facebook's refusal to expunge personal data of people who create an account and later decide to deactivate it.
Why the company wants to keep the data of ex-users is open to speculation. Facebook has said that while deactivating the account does not erase the users' profile information in the social network's servers, deleting it would erase all information. But to remove all information, users must manually delete content such as wall posts, friends, and groups.
More issues were raised as the social network gained popularity, and they served as my justification for staying out of it. Photo tagging, in particular, is a constant bleep on my radar of paranoia, as it opens users to the inconvenience of being easily identifiable to both strangers and the bad elements.
It's not always easy to resist the advances of Facebook. That everyone is on it is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the bandwagon's call can be quite persistent. On the other, the hype can be a turnoff.
The tide appears to be turning against the social network, though. In a June 13 report, the AFP stated that Facebook's growth is slowing and that the social network has lost users in the US and Canada.
In the US, six million users deactivated their accounts in May, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of it. In Canada, meanwhile, users fell 1.52 million to 16.6 million during the month.
Even in the so-called social networking capital of the world, Facebook appears to be losing its shine. A June 6 report by the Philippine Star puts Facebook penetration in the Philippines at 82.49 per cent in May - lower than the 93.9 per cent reported in March. Whether this means that Facebook lost users or that Internet penetration in the country has gone up faster than Facebook subscription has, it doesn't bode well for the social networking site, which depends on eyeballs to generate earnings.
I'm neither happy nor sad that Facebook is losing users - people dearest to me would clobber me if they thought that I was gloating that the connectivity that the social network offers is being threatened. But maybe, the mammoth that it has become could use a little shakeup. And maybe, this loss of users would make Facebook rethink the liberties it has been taking with users' privacy.
The views are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Brunei Times.
The Brunei Times

Philips pushes for smart card use in mobiles (BusinessWorld)

Published in the August 15, 2006 issue of BusinessWorld

News

BY JENNEE GRACE U. RUBRICO, Senior Reporter

Philips pushes for smart card use in mobiles

Philips Philippines, the local unit of Dutch firm Royal Philips Electronics, is pushing for the use of the radio frequency identification device (RFID) technology in mobile phone applications.
In a press conference held for the company’s 50th anniversary celebration recently, company officials said that RF1ID can be used for contactless phone applications, including bills payments.
RFID is used for "smart cards," or chips that process transactions, services, and identification without swiping or any form of contact. It is currently being used by universities as an all-around identification card, by public transport systems abroad, and by credit card companies.
Philips Philippines, which has Philips Semiconductors Philippines, Inc. as part of its group, is a center for excellence in RFID. Philips is celebrating its 50th anniversary in the country, while Philips Semiconductors is celebrating is 25^th.
"We are talking with the telecommunications companies right now for this so that instead of having to press keys for the transactions, like what is being done right now through G-cash, we can do it without contact,’" Philips Semiconductors Philippines general manager Jun Sta. Ana told BusinessWorld.
While bills payments can now be done through mobile phones, the current system still requires the use of the keypad for the payment process, he said.
The RFID will do away with this, he added.
The technology, to be called "near field communications," will be made available to all mobile phone companies that are interested in using it, Mr. Sta. Ana said.
"This [technology] will be integrated within the year. We’re promoting it with various telecommunications companies," he said.
Med Mateo, Philips Electronics and Lighting, Inc. president, also told reporters the group continues to push other uses for RFID, including its use for public transport, particularly for the Metro Rail Transit and Light Rail transit systems.
The technology is being used in Hong Kong’s Octopus card and in Singapore’s transportation access pass card for its mass transport system, among others.
Mr. Mateo said Philips continues to push for the use of smart cards in the proposed National ID system.
BusinessWorld earlier reported that Philips was in talks with the government for the use of smart cards for the national ID. The proposal for a single ID, however, has been met with opposition.
Officials said that Philips Semiconductors sees new RFID applications as one of the strongest drivers for growth going forward.
Philips Semiconductors Philippines, the biggest contributor among all the semiconductors units in Asia-Pacific, posted $1 billion in export sales last year. The firm expects to grow sales by 20% to 25% this year.
Other growth opportunities for the semiconductors group are power management units, or power chargers for mobile phones and audio players; telecommunications infrastructure including hardware used for cellsites; and automotive products, including sensors for anti-lock breaking systems.
For Philips Electronics and Lighting, meanwhile, growth opportunities are seen in street lighting and city beautification, mobile phones including third generation or 3G units which will be launched next year, plasma television, audio players, and medical devices.