Google Expands Search Encryption to China, Elsewhere

Google is now "routinely encrypting" Web searches made by users in China as it goes global with SSL encryption in the wake of spying and privacy scandals.

Google is now "routinely encrypting" Web searches made by users in China, an expansion of search encryption practices the company has been conducting on a limited basis for several years, according to reports.

The move is not specifically aimed at China, which is known to censor the Internet and track the online activity of its citizens, but "rather part of a global expansion of privacy technology designed to thwart surveillance by government intelligence agencies, police and hackers," Google told The Washington Post.

In fact, the Internet giant began encrypting searches conducted by logged-in Google users in late 2011. Last September, in the wake of the NSA spying revelations made by Edward Snowden, Google stepped up its Searching over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) parameters to cover basically all users of the site, logged in or not, Search Engine Land noted at the time.

Universal or not, as the Post noted, the current expansion of SSL-encrypted search by Google is likely to be an unwelcome development for the Chinese government and officials in other countries which routinely monitor Internet use.

"China's Great Firewall, as its censorship system is known, has long intercepted searches for information it deemed politically sensitive," the Post said. Chinese officials looking for search terms like "Dalai Lama" or "Tiananmen Square" could now be staring at "indecipherable strings of numbers and letters" when examining Google searches.

Thanks to expanded SSL encryption, the governments of countries like China and Saudi Arabia may have a tougher time keeping track of potential dissidents via their Internet browsing. But they still have a powerful arrow in their quiversimply blocking Google from the Internet within their borders, the Post noted.

Meanwhile, in another bit of privacy news, Twitter this week apologized for a bug that exposed nearly 100,000 private accounts to non-approved followers. The microblogging site said it had fixed a glitch that "under rare circumstances, allowed non-approved followers to receive protected tweets via SMS or push notifications since November 2013."

The Twitter SMS bug affected 93,788 protected accounts, the company said in a blog post.

"As part of the bug fix, we've removed all of these unapproved follows, and taken steps to protect against this kind of bug in the future," Twitter's Bob Lord said. "While the scope of this bug was small in terms of affected users, that does not change the fact that this should not have happened. We've emailed each of these affected users to let them know about this bug and extend our whole-hearted apologies."

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Google Expands Search Encryption to China, Elsewhere