InfoWorld: “Privacy concerns loom over ‘new’ Google domain registration service”

InfoWorld has concerns about Google and their new domain registration service.

Google’s invitation-only Domains name registration service works a lot like the old one but raises new questions about privacy and ad scraping

The big unanswered question: What about privacy of data stored on the domain? If Google is your registrar, can Google reach in and finger all of the data associated with the domain, in pursuit of better-honed advertising?

I turned to the Google Apps Administrator security and privacy statement. Realizing that Google Names is different from Google Apps for Business, the points made are the closest I can find to what we might expect from the new domain registration service:

Google may only share information with third parties in conformity with our Privacy Policy and your Customer Agreement. Google does not share or reveal private user content such as email or personal information with third parties except as required by law (see the Google Transparency Report), on request by a user or system administrator, or to protect our systems. These exceptions include requests by users that Google’s support staff access their email messages in order to diagnose problems; when Google is required by law to do so; and when we are compelled to disclose personal information because we reasonably believe it’s necessary in order to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users and the public.

That’s certainly reasonable, but it gets more complicated:

Our systems scan and index emails and some other user data for multiple purposes; this scanning is 100% automated and cannot be turned off. Scanning enables us to, for example, perform spam and malware detection, sort email for features like Priority Inbox, and return fast and powerful search results when users search for information in their accounts. The scanning and indexing that our systems run also enable us to display contextually relevant advertising, including in Gmail. If your domain disables ads, we will not use your data to display such advertising to your users. Domains using the free Standard Edition of Google Apps cannot disable ads.

Read the full article here