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Q&A: Privacy and a vanishing G.ho.st
October 9, 2008
The Question
I am a regular reader of the FT and your column. I was interested in G.ho.st (still am) but worried that the context within which it develops software and serves customers could put users completely at risk because of its privacy policy and terms of service.
This is a trend that we are heading toward in many kinds of cloud services. I’d appreciate your thoughts on this, by addressing it some time in your column.
From Mike
The Answer
Thanks for your email and for drawing my attention to the G.ho.st terms of service. As you note, the privacy policies and terms of service of some internet-based companies and cloud-based service providers are becoming extremely general and broad – G.ho.st seems like a case in point.
This is indeed a worrying trend and unfortunately most users do not read the ‘fine print’ in the privacy statements and ‘terms of service’ so they may not even be aware of what they are signing up to.
Of course, the ultimate sanction against a company that operates an unacceptable privacy policy or has terms of service that appear too wide is to avoid them and publicise the dangers.
I tried to contact the company this week to ask about their privacy policies and discovered that the site is down and the contact number is unavailable so maybe G.ho.st’s founders got the message…..
Interestingly Google recently had to change its privacy policy because of pressure from the European Union and user complaints and agreed to reduce the length of time that it holds onto search logs from 18 to 9 months.
