Forum Moderators: martinibuster
You agree that Google may transfer and disclose to third parties personally identifiable information about You for the purpose of approving and enabling Your participation in the Program, including to third parties that reside in jurisdictions with less restrictive data laws than Your own. Google disclaims all responsibility, and will not be liable to You, however, for any disclosure of that information by any such third party.
Which basically means that they have the right to get all and any information off you and pass it off to anybody they want, anywhere in the world. And that what the third party then does with that information has nothing to do with them.
Errr... Comments, people?
What are third parties approving us for?
The text of the TOS change is probably overbroad, but ad companies that offer targeted ad options have been giving out publisher information (at least about their sites) for years.
Google has more information, for example about site conversion rates, and who knows what that advertisers might want to access to decide if they want to place ads on particular sites.
Again, just guessing here. Google tends to modify their TOS's way in advance of needing those modifications.
Also, I suspect the particular TOS item will be modified yet.
What I don't like is the personally identifiable bit, which seems to my mind to open the poss of them giving out my details to anybody from spammers to Greenpeace to the North Korean IRS - without telling me, without asking me, and without my having recourse to a list of who got what.
And, if they've only just modified the TOS to include that line - well, they must have a reason.
Not necessarily evil, could end up protecting those of us already in the program from having too many bogus webmasters starting up in the program.
And what would be a "bogus webmaster"? A wannabe webmaster without a site? :)
I suspect this was added for legal & tax reasons, so that information could be disclosed by Google if it was legally requested. I would be very susprised if it had anything to do with credit reporting.
Webmasters using Adsense are not all based in the US of A. Data protection laws are a lot stricter in Europe than in America.
My understanding of how it works in Europe is that Google can't even let a third-party process and print the cheques if they don't have your approval to pass your information to a third party. Other countries may have more onerous laws. Maybe Google requires your approval on this purely to ease administration and to avoid having a range of different TOS catering for different countries/circumstances.
And nobody did say anything about a credit check per se. That was assumed. A company can't do a credit check on you (in the UK) without your consent. Maybe Google want to reserve the right to run some other check on you (perhaps a police/fraud/banned company director) check.
I don't have a problem with this. I really don't. Google have a lot of info on my site and traffic. They are holding no personal info on me apart from my snail mail and email address. So I'm not worried about what they'll disclose.
However, surely the federal inspection right is covered by points (7) and (11), plus the overriding right of the US gov to inspect such things?
Possible it could be so that if a foreign gov asked for information they could pass it over.
However, the sheer overriding impetuosity of the wording has me, quite frankly, wondering as to whether or not the "Google as a monopoly" party are correct. After all - if you really are being followed, is it paranoia?
Just speculating here, but I suspect down the line advertisers will be provided with more options about where they might want to have their ads run, and that will require that some publisher information be made available to advertisers.
Quite possible, rbacal. They could possible be using some piblisher sites as example sites when trying to woo large companies into running Adwords and/or Adwords with content ads enabled.
surely the federal inspection right is covered by points (7) and (11), plus the overriding right of the US gov to inspect such things
Sanenet, our posts obviously crossed :)
Funny, isn't it? Only the Americans (or to be more accurate - people of the USA) assume the rest of the world doesn't exist :)
It doesn't matter what overriding rights the US govt has. If Google is holding data on a UK Citizen they play the game as described by UK legislation.
: )
[edited by: Macro at 5:33 pm (utc) on June 9, 2004]
[edited by: nyet at 5:33 pm (utc) on June 9, 2004]
Good point about the European printer though - it's true, they would need your express permission before passing the bank / printer / subsidary your financial information. I still think that the wording is taking a liberty tho'!
It was not so much the generalization that ruffles my feathers it is the "only the Americans" part.
Rather like saying "I know a Marco who is an over-generalizer" Therfore anyone not named "Marco" is not.....
But, then again, I don't watch cnn much . ; )
[edited by: nyet at 5:42 pm (utc) on June 9, 2004]
So in other words, Google can tell "third parties" everything about our performance, yet we still can not excercise that right and share w/ each other...
I'm trying to gift one of my sites to my toddler kids so I can take advantage of their personal allowances (i.e. a combined total of about USD16,000 of income I can avoid tax on) but apparently if I gift them an earning asset the earnings from that asset come within my income for the purposes of tax :(
The only way around that is to get someone else to gift them the site. Which means I've got to "sell" it to a friend and have him "gift" it to my kids. It's a crazy world.
But, then again, I don't watch cnn much
I suspect these terms are the cause of all the carp junk snail-mail I've been getting since I began using AdSense. I never got that carp before.
(I make slight but deliberate spelling errors when giving my snail mail address ... so I know who's disclosed my address to the junk mail advertisers ;))
That's what scares me.
That's what scares me.
Would you really have not signed up even if you read these statements? Come on, who reads the gazillion lines of copy that comes with MS software before loading?
With most of these types of agreements you have to basically give up all rights to everything, twisted by legalise language that only an attorney could accurately explain the implications.
Come on, who reads the gazillion lines of copy that comes with MS software before loading
I do. I don't install software very often, so when I do it's really not a big deal to spend a few minutes and read the license agreement before I agree to it. It's prevented me from ever getting Adware and other unwanted crap on my system. If I see something I don't like in the agreement, I don't install the software or don't sign up for the service. IMHO if you're NOT reading the agreements, you're kind of an idiot :)
Anyone who says you "need a lawyer" to understand a license agreement has clearly never even tried to READ ONE. They're spelled out in plain english that anyone with a high school reading and comprehension level would understand.
In this case, the user has to choose whether having their name out there is worth the money that AdSense will bring them. What I DON'T recall seeing though (and maybe I just forgot, it was a while ago I read the TOS) was if that information is still available to third parties if you STOP using AdSense. I agreed to having my info disclosed while I was an advertiser, but I would have a problem with them keeping my info in the database if I stopped using AdSense.
who reads the gazillion lines of copy that comes with MS software before loading?
I read that stuff and have been doing so for years. It's just second nature to me. *shrug*
I am not getting any junk mail as a result.
Me neither, though I did think about it for a while when reading G's TOS.
