谷歌如何保护隐私
一个拥有大量个人隐私的公司如何才能有效保障用户的隐私？
在个人信息泄露硝烟四起的2010年底，google提名Whitten为隐私保护部门主管。随后，Whitten便开始在公司宣传他的“隐私文化”并且初显成效。
在过去的一年中，Google发布了新的隐私保护工具，从多个方面保护用户的隐私，并且建立故障保险柜以便在受到攻击时仍能采取相应的举措。
Whitten在接受新闻采访时说，“我们已经做出了令人瞩目的成绩，我们已经造好了汽车，现在只是在做一些小的调整。”
作为调整的一部分，Google在周二推出了一项关于精简隐私政策的声明，决定结束不同的产品的不同隐私标准。Google将把它们中的大部分提炼为精简的声明。这样做也有利于Google阐明其在个人隐私保护方面的立场。
关于要做出的这些变化，Google通知了它的用户，还在各大城市打出了关于隐私保护的宣传广告。
Google关于强化个人隐私保护的举措在一定程度上也是受到了联邦贸易委员会的影响。去年3月，Google同意向政府提交一份独立的隐私调查报告，由于该公司在2010年2月无意间向某社交网络提供了部分用户的联系人列表。
这是正公司的转折点。刚从2010年11月的噩梦中苏醒，Whitten便开始实施他的举措。
起初这看起来是一个奇怪的选择。但是Whitten的坚定决心让Google的隐私保护措施逐步走向完善。
建立隐私文化
在Whitten出任隐私部主管之前，Google在每项新产品推出之前都有一个隐私审查。Whitten认为这种审查是一种没有太大实际意义的行为，缺乏一种统一而坚强的指导。
Whitten建立了一个名为“隐私工作小组”的组织，他雇佣了很多个人隐私方面的专家（匿名，隐私意识和广告）。这个小组通过对新产品的分析来审查其隐私性。
公司还采取了多项措施以保证关于隐私方面的决定要由多人共同做出，而不能由一人独断。“我们不希望大家对我们的代码持有怀疑的态度，大家认为它在做这样的事情而实际上它做了其他的事情。”因此，Google让工程师们给隐私工作小组的专家讲解代码来使他们理解代码到底在做些什么。
Whitten说他最伟大的成就就是把隐私文化引入到了Google的企业文化之中。
Google还把隐私保护与员工的考核联系起来。当员工被评定是否升值时，一个重要的指标就是他们是否在产品中有力践行了对隐私的保护。
Whitten认为这是一个重大的成功，Google的很多员工都已经把这项举措视为一种主动的意识。隐私保护不再是Google的一个负担，相反，Google的员工正把隐私保护看成一项重要的业务。
随着Google产品的日益大众化，隐私的保护成为了一项重要的任务。
“我们的客户就是我们最大的商业资产，是第一位的。这也是为什么Google要采取各种措施来保护用户的隐私。”
How Google keeps your secrets private【CNN】
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- How does a company that collects so much information from its users keep all that data private?
At the end of a miserable 2010 filled with privacy blunders including thedisastrous Google Buzz fiasco, Google appointed Whitten to the position of privacy director. Since then, Whitten has instituted what she calls a "culture of privacy" at the company. So far it has been paying off.
Over the course of the past year, Google (GOOG,Fortune 500) has released new privacy tools, put in place a multifaceted structure to ensure users' privacy, and built in fail-safes to make sure nothing falls between the cracks.
"We've made incredible progress on this over the past year," said Whitten in an interview with CNNMoney that took place last month. "We've built the car, and now we're just doing the tune-up."
As part of that tune-up, Google on Tuesday made the major announcement that it hasstreamlined its privacy policy. Instead of 70 policies across each of its products -- search, maps, Gmail, etc. -- Google will consolidate most of them into a single, shorter, privacy agreement. Whitten wrote in a blog post Tuesday that the move is designed to add clarity to Google's privacy stance.
Google has begun notifying its users of the changes. The company also began a massive publicity campaign this month, putting advertisements about privacy in major cities throughout the country.
The company is ramping up its privacy initiative as the Federal Trade Commission iskeeping a watchful eye on the search giant. Last March, Google agreed to submit an independent privacy review to the government for the next 20 years after the company inadvertently revealed some users' e-mail contact lists to the public in its February 2010 release of the Buzz social network.
That was a turning point for the company. Still reeling from the Buzz nightmare, the company in October 2010 hired Whitten -- an engineer -- to head up its new privacy initiative.
It appeared to be a curious choice at first. But Whitten's roots as an in-the-trenches software nerd allowed her to change Google's privacy approach for the better.
Forming a privacy culture
Prior to Whitten's appointment as director of privacy, Google had a "privacy review" for each new product. Whitten described that review as "a cacophony, rather than a harmonized message that delivered strong guidance."
In its place, Whitten created an internal structure called the Privacy Working Group. Google hired people with expertise in specific areas of privacy like data anonymization, location awareness, and advertising. The company then put those experts into sub-groups.
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When a new product comes along, the subgroups analyze the products and determine things that the engineers may have missed, such as whether a user's location data is sufficiently separated from data that goes to advertisers.
The company also put in place several fail-safes to ensure that privacy decisions are never made by just one person.
"We don't want to have a situation where a decision is being made about something sensitive, where someone thinks the code is doing one thing, but it's actually doing something else," Whitten told CNNMoney..
As a result, Google now makes engineers go deep down into each new product's code to verify the Privacy Working Group experts' understanding of the code before a decision is made.
Whitten says her most important achievement, however, has been building privacy into Google's culture.
One way Google achieved that was by linking privacy to staff evaluations. When Googlers are up for promotions, one factor that's weighed is whether they ingrained privacy into their products and effectively used the Privacy Working Group.
Whitten said the initiative has been a success, and many Googlers have felt empowered by the changes she has instituted. Privacy is no longer a burden to Google's staff, she said. Instead, Google engineers view getting privacy right as business-critical.
As Google's products begin to flow into one another, getting privacy right will be a crucial task going forward. Search Plus Your World, Google's new search tool that displays social network information in search results, has already raised some eyebrows.
"Our users are our biggest business asset; that's the No. 1 thing that we can't screw up," Whitten said. "That's why making sure Google has a really good privacy process helps me sleep at night."