An article on the Herald Sun’s website about Google using house numbers obtained as party of Google’s StreetView project as captchas (those annoying type what you see in the image to prove you are real on most websites) has me scratching my head.
UK based organisation Big Brother Watch is complaining that Google is using personal data for commercial gain. Big Brother Watch identifies two issues – identifying the number of people’s houses and using users to enter this data.
Firstly, it needs to be remembered that Google StreetView shows what anyone can see by driving down the road. If a street number is viewable on StreetView it is also viable by someone driving past.
Secondly, does Big Brother Watch realise that many sites use reCAPTCHA which uses captcha challenges to digitise books? Where is the big deal about that? People are still unwittingly being used as data entry clerks but I don’t see Big Brother Watch complaining about that.