Freq---
I know, and I hate it.
Of course we are low logged into the Google Account, but who needs a Google account for search? Not me.
I search all day and I use AdWords all day, logging in and out would just be stupid and time consuming. Luckily I have 2 different, not connected PC's on my desk...
"use account for personal search" or something along those lines, just dont click that button.
goto www.google.com/accounts and login the select the
Delete Personalized Search
link on the bottom left of the page, this will stop it.
Then you go through the silly "convert to a Google account" on every account you set-up.
You need a seperate email address for each one, and your email address is your user ID. Email addresses for user IDs are WAY out of favor, due to phishing. Google doesn't display your email address to others, but it still makes me uncomfortable.
It's poorly thought-out, as is much of what I have seen from Google. I am reminded of the fable of the Emperor and his fine new threads...
If you post on Google Groups, you are vulnerable to phishing and email harvesting.
While your email address is not shown in the default view when reading groups, you can still get somebody's email address. View a message and click on "options". Choose "reply to author". In some cases, it will show the user's email address, in other cases it won't. (I can't figure out for the life of me where to turn this off.)
Even if the email address doesn't display, you could just send a private message to the author. If they reply, now you have their email address.
Many users are probably at that point vulnerable to simple password-guessing attacks. (First name, etc.) If you don't use strong passwords, a hacker now has half of what he needs to hijack your account. In many cases, the other half is easy. User IDs need to be nearly as private as passwords. User IDs, ideally, should be known only to the user and to admins or others with a need to know, associated with whomever issued the user ID. User IDs also shouldn't be used as default screen names - at least Google has avoided this trap.
In any case, they are now vulnerable to phishing attacks by sending email claiming to be from Google.
eBay discontinued the use of email addresses as user IDs several years ago, due to phishing attacks. They required all of their users who were using email addresses as user IDs to change their user IDs.
Fast forward several years, and now Google is using email addresses as user IDs. Not just PERMITTING them or ENCOURAGING them (as eBay once did) but REQUIRING them.
I am just astounded by the stream of poor design decisions coming out of Google.
(An aside - here's some fallout from the decision to require Google IDs to be used for Adwords and MCC accounts. If you manage accounts, including your own, you have AT LEAST two Google IDs. When you use Google groups, at a time when you happen to be logged-in to one or the other (or more) of your accounts, you are going to be posting as different users. I have two nicknames on Google Groups. And two sets of "read" pointers, etc. Fortunately, I read new messages using RSS, so I don't have to depend on the pointers.)
