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Do you know where your Google data was last night?

Yale University has postponed its adoption of Gmail in part because of concerns that Google will/can not tell Yale where or in what country their private information/data will be stored -- per Yale Daily News.

  • "Google stores every piece of data in three centers randomly chosen from the many it operates worldwide in order to guard the company’s ability to recover lost information — but that also makes the data subject to the vagaries of foreign laws and governments, [Yale computer science professor Michael] Fischer said. He added that Google was not willing to provide [Yale] ITS with a list of countries to which the University’s data could be sent, but only a list of about 15 countries to which the data would not be sent."

It appears that Google continues to organize information for the benefit of Google's own engineering efficiency, simplicity and convenience -- without regard to what is best or safest for its users.

  • WHERE users private data is stored by Google has immense implications for users' privacy, security and whether or not their private data/communications are vulnerable to subpoena, with or without their knowledge.  

This is further evidence of Google's cavalier approach to privacy and security of users.