If you missed Google’s quiet announcement last Friday, when it posted an update to its Terms of Service related to its online ad campaigns, well, you’ll probably be in for a bit of a shock when your photo and name starts showing up in adverts scattered across the web.

Under the new ToS, the search engine giant will be able to display so-called ‘endorsements’ from Google+ users in its search result adverts and “other promotional contexts,” it says. What this means is that, anyone who has previously provided a review of products, stores, hotels and restaurants etc., could soon see their image and name pop up alongside paid ads that are displayed to their friends and connections. As well as showing up on Google Search, these ads are also expected to appear on other Google properties – such as YouTube etc. – plus the two million plus websites that are part of Google’s wider display ad network.

Naturally, Google is trying to put a positive spin on this development, painting what many will see as a massive intrusion of their privacy into something that’s ‘fun’ and ‘helpful’. From Google’s statement:

“We want to give you – and your friends and connections – the most useful information. Recommendations from people you know can really help. So your friends, family and others may see your Profile name and photo, and content like the reviews you share or the ads you +1’d.”

The more paranoid might see this development as yet example of the ‘Big Brother’ state lurching closer to reality. Remember Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie, Minority Report, which went to great pains to show how individual’s privacy rights and freedoms would be totally dissolved within the next fifty years? Well, with the antics of companies like Google this idea is accelerating towards reality at a far faster rate than even Spielerg had expected, and certainly much quicker than most people would have anticipated.

Not everyone will be surprised at this development however. Speaking to Salon.com back in 2002, MIT Media’s John Underkoffler spoke of his own influence on the creepy advertising scenarios that Minority Report’s future citizens were subject to:

“That idea was integral from the very beginning…the idea that your privacy was really a thing of the past, that the pure market forces had long since eroded everyone’s intimate civil liberties.”

And that’s exactly where Google’s heading with its own, intrusive advertising methods now, slowly but surely eroding your privacy whilst telling you it’s supposed to be ‘fun’. By the time people realize just how funny this isn’t, it could well be too late…

At least for now, Google is giving users a chance to opt out of these unwitting ‘endorsements’, although readers should be warned that everyone has been ‘opted in’ by default to begin with. Luckily it’s fairly easy to opt out of the new ‘feature’ – simply head on over to your Google + account, click on the Shared Endorsements setting, and switch it off. While you’re there, you may also want to change things so any +1’s you make are withheld from Google ads too, just in case you didn’t know that’s already happening.

Alternatively, if you’re feeling a little more mischievous than pissed at this kind of privacy invasion, you might want to follow the lead of some Google +’s smarter users and join in with their protest. Simply switch your profile to a pic of Google’s exec. chairman Eric Schmidt, and everything you endorse will look like it came from him :)