This highlights a problem that is almost always ignored by the people flogging online services: that you are making yourself completely dependent on them. They can change the service however they like, without asking you first. In reality, you probably don’t even have copies of your own data, and can lose access to it at any time. (You should have, but I bet you don’t.)—Google Reader invades your privacy and it’s not going to stop
2 Comments
Thanks for pointing that out. It’s something I’ve been concerned about since I first heard about those kinds of services. I’m always amazed at the extent to which people will blindly buy into something just because it’s “online” and therefore “progressive.”
Yeah right.
I’m a privacy advocate like the next guy, but colour me un-outraged about this.
I think the real lesson in this is that people shouldn’t expect privacy by obscurity. The entire point of “shared items” is to broadcast them to the world. Unless there’s a password or other authentication system put in place to control who views the content, you should not assume that anyone won’t see it.
Just because something has a long URL doesn’t mean someone else isn’t going to find it. And that’s basically the level of security that some people thought was adequate with Google Reader.