Comments on: What do you think of Google Flu Trends?

By: bckhough

bckhough — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:13:51 +0000

We are nearing 2014… http://robinsloan.com/epic/

By: Jaime/Talking Books Librarian

Jaime/Talking Books Librarian — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:01:04 +0000

I don’t know how they track where you are, but I admit I had never heard of this Google flu trends…. very interesting indeed! Thanks for the heads up!

By: Francesca Smith

Francesca Smith — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:58:59 +0000

the book Feed by TM Andersen has a very dystopian take on ultra-individual data mining – Not an uplifting happy book.

By: lilaclee

lilaclee — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:47:10 +0000

Do you use toolbars? They keep track of where you go too. I don’t use many products that want to keep track (spy) on my walk around the Internet. We can’t get away from all of them but there is a price to pay for collecting all kinds of data. It makes us susceptible to our personal data getting out there and misused.

By: Robin Hastings

Robin Hastings — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:01:34 +0000

Yep – it’s all IP based. Check http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?Getlocation to see what info you give out to every site you visit. Some track it, some don’t, but because of the nature of the technology, you are giving out this information to every site – unless you use an anonymizer, which we block here at the library. ’bout the only way to avoid giving out information on the web is to not use it…

By: Kelley

Kelley — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:04:52 +0000

There are ways to geolocate, by IP I’m assuming. Considering the insane amount of information Google Analytics collects about website users it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they set some kind of auto locate on searches for flu or like keywords. (Though now I’m sounding like a conspiracy theorist.)

I’m a big fan of Google products too, but I get nervous about how much they track me. That’s why after using e-mail/reader I always log out so that Google can’t follow me around the rest of the web like they do.