A few days ago Google announced they wanted to personalise search and had started to add profile information to name based Google searches. What this means is that now when you search for a name, at the bottom of your search results will be profile results containing personal information of people with profiles matching that name.

Whilst the concept does sound useful initially, there are some serious flaws in this integration of information model Google is pushing that simply due to the nature of the internet cannot be ignored.

Simply put, you’ll definitely want to read on if you’re considering creating a Google profile.

1. Abuse

The most obvious and potentially dangerous use of this new feature is abuse from people creating profiles that aren’t them. Currently the security measures in place are credit card and mobile phone number verification, neither of which currently required for a profile to appear publicly.

Sure the option is there for legitimate profile creators to secure their accounts, but for scammers there’s currently nothing stopping them registering a bogus email address and going to town on what information is available about you when someone google’s your name.

Not to mention the fact that multiple profiles can be shown to accommodate common names so whilst you might have a legit profile up, there’s nothing much you can do short of reporting a dodgy clone and hoping it is removed in a timely fashion.

For most of us this is a non issue as, unless you have an extremely common pairing of a first and last name, the amount of people searching your name is negligible. For well known people though this is a potential minefield of misinformation and abuse, the most prominent of which bring me to my next point:

2. Spam

If you run a scam website then the business of search engine optimisation is critical to your success. You need to get your website up their in the search rankings so that people click on your site and then are exposed to whatever scammy business you might be peddling.

With the advent of profiles, enterprising scammers are now practically given a guaranteed ‘first page of results’ placeholder to work with.

According to Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool, last month 20,400,000 people searched for “Britney Spears”. Now that’s an insane amount of potential traffic if a scammer can get a profile page up that looks semi legit and contains enough initial information to warrant someone clicking to see more.

The only defense Google offer against this kind of abuse is hoping someone reports it and waiting to then see how long it takes Google to identify the profile is fake (how are they going to do this? Get in touch with Britney Spears?) and remove it.

Now Britney Spears is at the upper end of popularity when it comes to search strings and if I was a scammer I’d probably aim for a more scattered approach. Given that all I need is an email address to create a profile, it would make much more sense to create bogus profiles for less popular search queries that are far less likely to be reported to Google that link back to whatever scam I was running.

What are Google going to do then? To attempt to verify non-celebrities surely there’s some huge privacy issues if Google themselves attempt to verify your personal information to confirm a profile isn’t bogus by actively trying to confirm the information themselves.

3. Stalkers

Users of Facebook and Myspace will already be familiar with the potential danger of revealing too much information online publicly but still have the relative protection of a profile set to private.

With Google profiles, whatever you (or someone else) decides to put up online will become publicly accessible when someone searches your name.

What about school bullies? Kids are notorious for setting up bogus Myspace profiles and “leaking” the urls around so that the target feels humiliated. Now all they have to do is set up a bogus profile and just tell people to google their target’s name.

Further to that if you report the profile Google assumes the person is you and will ask for identification proving your identity. I guess if the person being victimised doesn’t use the internet much or is technologically handicapped then there’s practically bugger all chance of Google removing a non-obviously misleading profile about them.

Google profiles makes stalking and/or harassing people way to easy.

4. Centralisation of Personal Data

Google already know what I search for, what I discuss in my email conversations, what my interests are based on any advertising I might click on and what sites I visit based on my search results.

To verifiy a Google profile account I also now have the option of handing over my credit card number or my mobile phone number.

In an age where information is king, that’s a hell of a lot of data for one company to have on one person. It’s more then my employer, family members, partners and even the government know about me.

Hell if your a parent Google probably knows more about your kids then you do.

It doesn’t just stop there though, if you want to contest a bogus profile you will need to hand over even more information:

Profiles with no clear malicious goals, but perhaps with just your full name, may require you to send a photo of a government issued ID, such as a drivers license. You don’t need to submit it as you fill out the form, but we may contact you via email for this information.

This will also no doubt be kept on a database somewhere in Google land for future reference if required.

5. Identity theft

Think of Google like a (non-US) bank and think of your personal information as wads of money in a safe inside the bank. For potential hackers there is no doubt an directly interlinked exponential value in attempting to hack Google as the amount of data Google archive increases.

Now I’m not saying Google are going to get hacked tomorrow or that if they are planes will start falling out of the sky and Jesus himself will descend from the Google datacenters and begin the apocalypse, but it’s not like Google themselves are immune to privacy breaches.

Not even a month ago there was an issue with embedded images being publicly accessible from private documents uploaded to Google Docs, amazingly images were still accessible even after the documents had been deleted from a user’s Google Docs account.

Now admittedly the probability of your identity being compromised over a leaked image from an uploaded document is slim but I believe it’s only a matter of time before we see a major information leak. The sheer amount of data Google collects is mind boggling and the more personal the information they collect the more attractive a target they become to would be hackers.

Mind you this isn’t just a Google bashing exercise, the same goes for any company that wields such vast amounts of information. It’s always amazed me that people seem to be paranoid with offline information security but will then happily post every minute detail of their life on Facebook, Myspace and now Twitter.


With the introduction of Google profiles Google are no doubt pushing the boundaries of personal information intrusion and usability. I can see the value in being able to see personal information when I perform a search for someone’s name but I can’t help but ask at what cost does this convenience come at?

The underbelly of the internet is amazingly resourceful and I’ll bet they’ve already thought of ways to abuse being able to get a profile on the first page of search results for heavily searched names in ways myself or Google never imagined. Once this thing goes worldwide I fear that due to the problems of verifying personal information that usability of Google search and personal information accuracy is going to take a huge hit.

If someone wants to get their personal information out there they’ll find a way, they don’t need Google dumbing down the process so that any knucklehead with an email address can post up information about anyone else.

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