An anonymous reader writes:
Recently, I purchased a domain to use for a pro bono website I'm building for a local, annual event. I put up a placeholder site, pointed the domain at it, and mailed my contact at the organization (using my Gmail account) to tell her about the domain. This is the only place that the domain was ever mentioned — neither of us have mentioned it to anyone else or any any other website, and have sent no traffic there by any other means than typing the URL into our browsers or clicking on the links in the email. We didn't want anyone to see it yet, since it's not done (or even yet begun, for that matter). When I registered it (several weeks ago), numerous relevant Google keyword searches as well as an explicit search for the domain turned up no results. Now any of these searches brings up this site as the first hit.
From the Gmail Privacy Policy:
When you use Gmail, Google's servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL).
So my hypothesis is that Google gleaned address out of my email via its URL-tracking voodoo and then indexed it, and this possibility does seem covered by their privacy policy. But I still find this pretty disturbing: can't I email someone a URL without the whole world finding out about it? What if the contents of this site fell into what the broader Google Privacy FAQ classifes as "sensitive information"?
..information we know to be related to confidential medical information, racial or ethnic origins, political or religious beliefs or sexuality and tied to personal information.
