Under Google's new privacy policy, which the company says will take effect on March 1, all of your personal data across Google's services, including Gmail, Picasa and YouTube, will be merged into a single database, which the company says will allow it to provide you with more relevant search results. Computer users who don't want to share their search or other data with the company can log out of their Google accounts—or even cancel them to remain totally anonymous. But the situation is more complicated for owners of smart phones powered by Google's Android operating system.
By linking its services, Google says it will provide users with a "simpler, more intuitive Google experience" through better-targeted ads and reminders like this: "We can provide reminders that you're going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day." Depending on you and your preferences, that could be spooky or actually useful.
Android users may furnish Google with even more information than computer users, including information about their phone calls, text messages, GPS locations, and what apps they use.
According to Google, the new policy doesn't provide the company with any information that it couldn't already get under existing policies—it just allows Google to cross-reference the data across multiple accounts and devices.
Google says it won't follow your moves if you don't sign into any of your Google accounts. Or you can just close your Google accounts and take your data elsewhere. But that's not very practical if you use an Android phone. Technically, without signing into Google, you can still make calls, send texts, and add e-mail accounts (I've tried this successfully on several Android phones). But you can't download new apps, update those already installed, or sync your phone with G-Mail or Calendar.
At this point, this controversial new policy has generated a lot of unanswered questions. Consumer advocates, including Consumers Union (the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports) are carefully examining the policy and deciding how to respond.
In the meantime, if you have concerns about the policy's impact on your privacy, you can turn off your search history and log out of Google in your phone’s browser and log out of your Gmail account when you're not using it. You can use a Web browser to conduct searches without logging into a Google account, and can even use things like third-party GPS tools. Browser privacy may actually be easier to attain on a phone than on a desktop, since Gmail is an app on the phone, while on the desktop, it's a browser tab. You can stay logged in to Gmail on your phone without having to log into it on your browser, something that's more cumbersome on a desktop (that is, you need to use another browser or open an incognito window).
These options won't give you the same level of anonymity that computer users can get by closing all of their Google accounts, but they'll limit how much data Google collects from your Android device.
