Google's Ethical Controversy

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Right to be Forgotten Google has numerous allegations of privacy violations ranging from harmful publicized information to candid photography of people’s private lives. My paper brings to light the allegation’s possible downsides and upsides and the outcomes regarding each. There have been more and more lawsuits against Google popping up over the recent years, with citizens concerned about their private lives being exposed in harmful ways. The reference page titled Google’s Privacy Rap Sheet includes over 80 infractions on the privacy of users around the world. These range from hacking Google Glass to allow the hacker to see what the user sees, tracking user’s movements without consent via GPS, Street View privacy invasions, publishing private …show more content…

In 2013, Google acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy with its Street View project. This lawsuit was brought forth by 38 states involved in the project. June 2014, The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that wiretap law prohibits the type of transmission that Google’s Street View cars did secretly from citizens unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google’s argument was that it’s the user’s fault for not encrypting their network and it was a form of radio communication, which is not covered under wiretapping laws; however the court denied the claim. This meant Google was guilty of illegally wiretapping tens of millions of Americans private homes. Google claimed the Wi-Fi tapping was caused by an unauthorized project of a rogue engineer. The verdict found Google guilty, and imposed a mere $7 million …show more content…

On January 15, 2014, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) released the results of its investigation into Google’s ad services. The results showed how Google was breaching their own privacy policy by associating a cookie pertaining to certain categories of sensitive information, such as health information. Google acknowledged that not all of its advertisers followed their policy, and took the proper steps to remedy the cookie dilemma. The privacy violation comes in the way of another person using the same computer and seeing advertisements that were left behind from the previous user. If a user searched for sleep apnea devices, he would see ads for related products even after closing the page and moving on to something

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