Defining Chaos In Order

Here’s something I actually missed the first time, straight from the EULA for Google’s Chrome.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Scary …

Some of these things make sense, after all, a browser has to submit data in order to get any result. The scary part is where “ … you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Say What?! This has got to be the most effective way of obtaining browsing behaviour, in order to adapt your advertising market to it.

Matti Privacy chrome, eula, google

*Update 17/2/2010*: GMail recently enabled this HTTPs connection by default, so please read on for the fix!

You’ve probably just enabled the latest setting in Gmail: Always use HTTPs. (But good news, there’s a fix!)

Though this setting is advised (as it is more secure, and less vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting or XSS), it has the downside of disabling your GMail notifier. It will spill out “An error has occured. Cannot connect to your mailbox. Service temporarily unavailable.”- alerts instead of notifying you of new messages.

Yet I can’t image it would take long for Google to prepare a fix for this.

More information on the “Always use https” can be found in the GMail blog.

*Update*: They’ve added a quick fix for this issue, where a registry setting is altered so the Notifier retrieves your e-mail from the HTTPs site, instead of the HTTP site. More information, see the comments!

Matti Privacy, Security broken, gmail, https, notifier, xss

So a new legislation passed in Germany: the BKA or Bundeskriminalamt, the federal crime unit, now has the right to search your home computer(s) [if the computer is located in Germany]. The law does state that a detective can not enter your home to install special software, so it looks like they’ll have to hack their way in using trojans. So much for privacy.

I wonder how long it would take for the government to start searching through company servers for signs of “terrorism”…

Matti Privacy germany, Privacy