Introduction

The concept of privacy has been a cornerstone of legal systems for centuries. With the advent of the digital age, however, the definition and scope of privacy have become increasingly complex. One of the most contentious issues in this regard is the tracking of user activity by technology companies. Google, one of the world's largest tech giants, has faced significant scrutiny over its practices, particularly its alleged tracking of users even when they are in incognito mode.

Incognito Mode: A Misconception

Incognito mode, a feature available in many web browsers, is often misunderstood as a guaranteed way to protect user privacy. While it does prevent the browser from saving browsing history, cookies, and site data, it does not shield users from being tracked by websites or other third parties. In essence, incognito mode provides a more private browsing experience within the context of a single device but does not offer complete anonymity.

Google's Tracking Practices

Google has been accused of tracking user activity even when they are in incognito mode. While the company has denied these allegations, several studies and reports have suggested that Google may be able to identify users across devices, even when they are using incognito mode. This tracking can be achieved through a variety of methods, including:

• Cookies and Tracking Pixels: Even in incognito mode, websites can still set cookies or tracking pixels on a user's device. These can be used to track a user's browsing behavior across different websites and devices.
• IP Address Tracking: Google, like other internet service providers, can track a user's IP address. While IP addresses can change, it is possible for Google to identify a user based on their IP address history.
• Account Linking: If a user is signed into a Google account, even in incognito mode, Google can link that user's browsing activity to their account. This can allow Google to track a user's behavior across different devices and services.

Legal Implications

The legality of Google's tracking practices has been the subject of much debate. While there are no specific laws that explicitly prohibit Google from tracking users in incognito mode, the company's practices could potentially violate a number of existing laws, including:

• Data Protection Laws: Many countries have data protection laws that require companies to obtain user consent before collecting and processing their personal data. If Google is collecting and processing user data without their consent, it could be in violation of these laws.
• Privacy Laws: Some jurisdictions have laws that protect individuals' privacy from unreasonable intrusion. If Google's tracking practices are deemed to be an unreasonable intrusion on user privacy, they could be in violation of these laws.
• Anti-Competitive Laws: In some cases, Google's tracking practices could be seen as anti-competitive. For example, if Google is using its tracking data to give its own products and services an unfair advantage over competitors, it could be in violation of antitrust laws.

Conclusion

The issue of Google tracking users in incognito mode is a complex one with significant legal implications. While the company has denied these allegations, the evidence suggests that it may be able to track user activity to a certain extent. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it is essential that lawmakers and regulators work to ensure that individuals' privacy is protected from unreasonable intrusion.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has a growing role in continuing legal education (CLE). AI can be used to automate tasks, provide personalized learning experiences, and assess student progress.

For example, AI can be used to automate the tasks of creating and grading CLE materials. AI can also be used to provide personalized learning experiences by recommending content that is tailored to each student's individual needs. Additionally, AI can be used to assess student progress and identify areas where additional support is needed.

The use of AI in CLE can help to make CLE more efficient and effective. AI can also help to make CLE more accessible to a wider range of learners.

Here are some specific examples of how AI is being used in CLE:

• Automated grading: AI can be used to automate the task of grading CLE materials. This can save time and improve accuracy.
• Personalized learning: AI can be used to provide personalized learning experiences by recommending content that is tailored to each student's individual needs. This can help students to learn more effectively.
• Assessment: AI can be used to assess student progress and identify areas where additional support is needed. This can help students to improve their learning outcomes.

Overall, AI has a growing role in CLE. AI can be used to automate tasks, provide personalized learning experiences, and assess student progress. This can help to make CLE more efficient and effective.

The post Does AI have a place in Continuing Legal Education? – An Experiment appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Google first introduced this technology in early 2019 as the Password Checkup extension. In October 2019, it became a part of the Password Checkup in your Google Account, where you can conduct a scan of your saved passwords anytime. It has evolved to offer warnings as you browse the web in Chrome. 

While this is a useful feature, and the integration with the Chrome browser makes it seamless, one important point that most coverage ignores or downplays is that the browser can only check passwords that the user is storing in their Google account as part of Chrome's built-in Password Manager. If you're using a separte password manager (e.g., LastPass, 1Password), Chrome's Password Checkup feature will not be able to access your stored passwords to check them.

Similarly, if you have set up a passphrase to encrypt the passwords stored in your Google account (recommended) the Password Checkup feture cannot acces them to check them.

The post Google Introduces New Feature to Chrome Browser | Warns of Hacked Passwords appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

While many people are familiar with the ability to type or enter a link to a Web page written in a foreign language into the Google Translate tool, fewer are aware that you can also handwrite or draw characters or pictographs of languages (such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) that do not use the "Latin/Roman/Western" characters used in the English (and other Western languages') alphabet. You can use this feature in any web browser on either Windows or MacOS computers. A touch screen is not required.

To use this feature from the Google Translate Web page, click the pencil icon in the lower left-hand corner of the box where you would ordinarily type your text (or would enter the URL of a Web page) to be translated.

Left-click (and hold) your mouse to draw the characters you're hoping to translate into the subsequent "drawing" box. (If you're using a device with a touch screen, you can use your finger to draw.)

Then click the blue "Enter" button in the lower right-hand corner of the drawing box (above).

Google Translate then "recognizes" the character you drew and translates it into your chosen language.

This feature is also available in the Google Translate Android and iOS mobile apps.

Google Translate can recognize and translate between 103 distinct languages when text is typed into its translate box and 38 languages when using a mobile device's camera to take a picture of text (such as a sign).

The post Google Translate Includes “Handwriting” Feature appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Google is shutting down its social networking site after "reportedly failing to publicly disclose a security bug affecting hundreds of thousands of accounts on the service," (according to CNN).

The "security bug" is reportedly far-reaching. According to The Washington Post, "Google is shutting down its long-shunned Plus social network for consumers, following its disclosure of a flaw discovered in March that could have exposed some personal information of up to 500,000 people."

The Verge blamed the closure on "the company [Google] reportedly fear[ing] regulatory scrutiny."

The story was originally reported in the Wall Street Journal in advance of a blog post from Google announcing the closure.

In its blog post, Google indicated that data that was potentially exposed was limited:

This data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age. (See the full list on our developer site.) It does not include any other data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any other service, like Google+ posts, messages, Google account data, phone numbers or G Suite content.

The post Google Shuts Down Google+ Social Networking Site appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

I had a look at my Google Search Settings today and was surprised by something I saw...or rather, something I didn't see.

Ordinarily, Google offers you the ability to (somewhat) manage when you see the page of Instant Search Results that accompanies the drop-down list of Instant Predictions that match the characters you type into Google's Search box. (See above left.)

When I visited my Google Search Settings page after a search this afternoon, I found that the radio buttons to control the setting (see above right) were missing. In fact, the setting was  missing when I checked the Settings page in Chrome today in both Mac and Windows.

At first, I was concerned that Google had taken away our ability to control this setting (while teasing us with the remnant seen above right). However, the setting only appears to be missing in Chrome for Mac and Windows. The setting is still available in versions of Firefox, Opera, and Safari (Mac) I'm running.

The post Did Google Mean to Discontinue Instant Predictions Setting appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

By way of an explanation, Google recognizes that, "sometimes you need to receive large files as direct email attachments." The key phrase here is "direct email attachments." This change appears to be an effort to minimize Gmail account holders' need to use third party, cloud file-upload (e.g., Hightail, SendBigFiles) or storage services (e.g., Box, Dropbox) to share access to a document. Now Gmail account holders can receive these larger documents directly from the sender(s).

Recently, a Virginia court ruled that an insurance company had waived its privilege in a matter when one of its representatives uploaded case documents to an uprotected file storage service. The judge found that uploading the documents to an unprotected file storage service was, "the cyber world equivalent of leaving its claims file on a bench in the public square and telling its counsel where they could find it." Sharing those documents directly with the intended recipient might have avoided the finding of loss of privilege.

The increase only applies to incoming attachments. Outgoing attachments are still limited to 25 MB. Larger files can be "attached" to outgoing emails by including a link to the document stored in your Google Drive.

Lawyers currently using Google's G Suite to power their practice (or who are considering making a switch) should check our webinar schedule for MCLE presentations on lawyers' use of Google's G Suite of cloud apps to improve their communications with clients, manage their documents better, and manage their workload more efficiently. CLE credit is available in approximately 20 states.

The post Size Matters to Google | Increases File Size Limit for Incoming Email Attachments appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Updated: November 13, 2016

Many paid legal research products such as LexisNexis and Westlaw offer the ability to search for keywords within a certain number of words from one another (a number that you define). For example, some pay databases allow you to search w/ (WITHIN any number of words that you indicate, such as w/2), /s (in the SAME SENTENCE), and /p (in the SAME PARAGRAPH). Google does offer an analogous, but nearly unknown, proximity connector - AROUND(n).

The Google proximity connector AROUND(n) must be placed in upper case as illustrated in this explanation. By replacing the “n” with a number, you determine how many words you want your keywords to be from each other. For example, when we searched for carole AROUND(2) levitt, we retrieved 281,000 results where carole was within 2 words of levitt. The results consisted of results like this:

• Carole A. Levitt
• Carole Ann Levitt
• Carole Levitt
• Nancy Jo Levitt
• Carol Suzanne Levitt (notice the name carol was retrieved)
• Alain Levitt, Carol Lim
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt inexplicably performing Carole King's classic “You Make ...

To conduct an even more targeted search, try enclosing each of your proximity search terms within their own set of quotation marks. Our search for “carole” AROUND(2) “levitt” retrieved 22,600 results. This search only retrieved results where the exact name carole was separated from exact name levitt (with up to two words in between carole and levitt). It disregarded any documents that included various spellings of carole and levitt while the earlier search, without quotation marks, retrieved results with spelling variations for carole and levitt.

Many researchers searching for documents that include a specified proper name conduct a phrase search. But conducting a proximity search for a proper name, using AROUND(n), is a better search than a phrase search. For example, a phrase search for "carole levitt" retrieved 19,800 result and only retrieved results that referred to Carole Levitt in that exact order and with no intervening words. What is missing from this search are the results that an AROUND(2) proximity search retrieved above, such as: Levitt, Carole; Carole A. Levitt; Carole Ann Levitt; Levitt, Carole A., or Levitt, Carole Ann.

In our live Continuing Legal Education seminars and webinars, we are often asked about conducting a compound proximity search, such as this one where the keyword Cybersleuth is within five words of "Carole Levitt", "Mark Rosch", or "Internet For Lawyers".

Usually, the asker will assumem that the query can be written this way:Cybersleuth AROUND(5) "Carole Levitt" OR "Mark Rosch" OR "Internet For Lawyers".

While a compound proximity search like this is possible, it must be written in Google's search box in this way

Cybersleuth AROUND(5) "Carole Levitt" OR Cybersleuth AROUND(5)"Mark Rosch" OR Cybersleuth AROUND(5)"Internet For Lawyers".

In our live MCLE seminars and webinars, we have long addressed the need for a reliable proximity connector when using free search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Google and Yahoo! use the asterisk (in very different ways) as a NEAR or "within one word" connector (respectively), but seemingly, nothing more precise was available. Web developer Kevin Shay created the more-precise proximity-searching GAPS interface; but it ceased working last year when Google retired the programming tools on which the GAPS site was based.  

According to Dan Russell, Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, the AROUND feature has been around, "for... oh... the past 5 or 6 years. Turns out that nobody ever bothered to write much about it." Russell took the wraps off the feature in a recent blog post. Perhaps the reason the "nobody ever bothered to write about it" is because there is NO documentation of the AROUND function in Google's "Web Search Help" section. There is a mention of the AROUND proximity search function in the Web Search "Help Forums," but it didn't appear up until January 14, 2011.

The Help Forum response suggests an alternate syntax for the proximity search (carole+2 levitt). Note however, that the syntax mentioned in that "help" response yields very different (and less precise) results than the carole AROUND(2) levitt search syntax.

Kudos to the ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center for bringing this feature to our attention.

The post Google Offers Proximity Search appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

According to Google, "[the] new name ... better reflects [their] mission.

The G Suite is a paid version of the tools also available to registered users of Google's free Gmail, including:

• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Docs
• Google Drive
• Google Hangouts

The paid version adds business-specific features such as:

• custom email addresses at your domain (@yourcompany.com)
• at least 30 GB of storage for documents and email (more storage can be purchased)
• 24/7 phone and email support
• administration/management dashboard

The change has no real effect on end-users. We have not seen any changes yet in the functionality of the individual applications in the suite or the administrative dashboard. End-users aren't even seeing the new logo (seen above).

Over it's lifetime, the product has been known by a variety of names, including:

• Google Docs
• Google Apps for Your Domain
• Google Apps 
• Google for Work
• G Suite

(If we've forgotten one, please let us know.) 

The post Google Introduces (Yet Another) New Name for Google for Work appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

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