Ryan Whitwam is a science and technology journalist and senior technology reporter at Ars Technica. He covers Google, artificial intelligence and mobile technology.
DI has documented statements by Ryan Whitwam on Artificial Intelligence, Consumer Protection, and Privacy. Read the quotations, original sources and related cases below.
Role at the time: Ars Technica reporter offering his own analysis
Condemned
Statement summary
Whitwam warns that sharing more data across Google services increases privacy risk.
“The more data you share across Google’s ecosystem, the greater the risk to your privacy.”
Open source (opens in a new tab)Updated Google privacy policy says your Gmail might be used for advertisingGoogle response and Whitwam's following assessment
Why we used this label
The case concerns the advertising exception. Whitwam criticizes the privacy consequences of enabling the connections.
Google's updated privacy policy adds an exception when users choose to make Drive, Gmail or Photos data available to other Google services supporting personalized ads. Google emphasizes opt-in connections and limits on direct use. Ryan Whitwam argues that indirect use increases privacy risk.
