“By following these five steps you can see just how much Google knows about you, your interests, the places you have visited, and your search habits,” Cara McGoogan reports for The Telegraph.
“You can see the profile Google has for you, including a rough age range, your gender, and your interests,” McGoogan reports.
“If you don’t agree with the profile Google has created for you, then you can change it to make it more (or less) accurate,” McGoogan reports. “This affects the adverts you’ll see across Alphabet products.”
How to in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Always godo to make sure you know how much (or how little) you’re sharing with Alphabet Inc.
I haven’t read the article yet, but I’m already creeped out. Patrick McGoohan was the producer/star of The Prisoner TV series back in the 60’s, the underlying theme of which was “Information. We want information.” Obviously not the same person or family, but the similarity in the names evokes the memory.
Seems you downplayed the first link in the article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/11056373/How-your-iPhone-is-tracking-your-every-move.html
I guess the iPhone side would be scary if that data was accessible to 3rd party apps who might do something with it.
Google pegs me at 65+, only 30+ years off. I’m far less “terrified” than this fearmongering article wants me to be. Yes Google is intrusive and terrible in many ways, it’s a featherweight compared to the real terror and theft inflicted by the US government on its own citizens. When’s the last time a newspaper wrote an article about “How to see all of the terrifying things your government is doing to you”?
le shill Google est arrivé.
Fortunately, lots of the info they do have for me is inaccurate due to deliberate efforts on my part, including my age and birthday.
I just wonder how much info they have on me that I can’t see!
… Nothing there. YEAH!
Well, except for YouTube info from when I was logged in.
IOW: From Google’s perspective, my anonymity strategies work. √
I barely have anything in my history either.
I’ve never had a gmail. Nor do I use Google as my search utility. Does this mean I can’t view this profile? Does it mean Google doesn’t know anything about me?
Probably only what can be gleaned from non-Google data sources in their search range.
Soon, another problem will emerge. Many of us have long been aware of this and have turned off (“paused”) all Google tracking. For me, there is no browsing history, no search history, no map history data, nothing.
And tomorrow, when Government asks Google to turn over all this history data, and Google has nothing to give them for people like me, a red flag will be raised at the NSA/FBI/CIA/TLA (three-letter Agency), for here is a person who has something to hide… At this point, I’m not even sure if the blocking of this history tracking would end up being a positive thing…
Typical Telegraph “Terrifying” Headline.
Now the Google article is part of my Google browsing history.
The price of using Internet conveniences.
I am more concerned about the information federal agencies have on people. Fortunately, my life is boring.
Chances are, it will be of no consequence to your life at all. However, there is a tiny little “however” here…
There are exabytes, zettabytes, eventually yottabytes of data harvested by Google about any one of us. Practically none of this data is of any consequence for anyone but the small, irrelevant (for anyone else) circle of our friends, family and colleagues. Those that trawl through this data for the purposes of finding sinister intentions (terror plots, criminal activity, etc) aren’t going through it all manually, e-mail by e-mail, selfie by selfie. Smart software does the trawling and when it finds something, it alerts humans.
The tiny little “however” from above refers to this smart software and the way it identifies something as suspicious. Because it looks for patterns, combinations, all sorts of variations that is normally associated with suspicious activities, it is inevitable that someone like you and I will one day get caught in its net because of some weird pattern match. What happens then will only depend on how much faith humans will have at that point in this software, and I am quite a bit scared by the possible outcome. As these analytical tools advance, so does the blind faith in them by those who use them. It may become quite impossible to extricate oneself from an accusation of terrorist plotting if it has been determined by some software analysing your purchasing habits on Amazon and your messages on G-mail.
Leaving little to no digital footprint behind us makes it much more difficult for those smart machines to extract some incriminating patterns.
If the smart machines are built like IBM’s Watson, it will tell you what data/resources it used and how it arrived at your ‘risk level’ so at least there will be somewhat reasoned trail to the result which the analyst can agree or disagree with.
I shut all the tracking down a long time ago. My record shows nothing. I’m a Google ghost.
ok, thanks.
so now we know where Google keeps your goo:
https://history.google.com/history
but
does anyone know where one can see/correct one’s profile?
i could not find “Activity controls”> “Ads”
thanks
You have to click on the three vertically arranged dots to get to the listing with ads. Ads are the last thing near the bottom of that page.