I have a grudge against the media and especially when it comes to the fear-forcing paranoia of self-proclaimed experts on privacy and law.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Google doesn’t really care about what you ate for lunch or where you are going dressed like that!
Many News LTD. outlets are pumping terror into readers by saying things like “To gain access to Gmail for example, users are asked to identify a blurry house number by typing it into a box.”—Well sorry, but that’s not the case. If you (or automated software) get the password wrong a certain amount of times, that’s a security breach and you will be required to ‘prove you’re human’ by typing what you see. Usually Captcha codes are words scanned from old books, but in this instance they will be highly color-stripped house numbers. Don’t want to take the risk that you could spot your house number in the little box? Virtually impossible, but if it really worries you then why don’t you write to Google and tell them that you don’t want your email account to be protected from scam artists, hackers or any other deviants that may be lurking for your information.
Google’s spokesperson said it for himself – "There is no geographical, individual or contextual information attached to the images whatsoever." so what’s the issue? Oh, right, the media trying to cause another public outcry.
If anyone manages to sue Google for this project then I will be suing cartographers and map publishers until I am a satisfied millionaire – those bastards have been distributing tiny inexplicit facts about my property for years!
I’m confident with my life as an extra-terrestrial studying conspiracy theorist. People call me paranoid and I laugh about wearing a tinfoil hat but when it comes to these little privacy tweaks, people climb under their chairs and hide. Hopefully these ‘experts’ realize that implements old books and letters to create ReCaptcha codes.
End of rant.
Take care.
