Imagine it.
You’re browsing online for a few pieces of clothing. Google knows. You visit the websites of your favourite stores for the fifth time this month. Google knows. You search up the directions to the store, maybe you even use Google maps to drive there. Google knows.
What did they deduce from that one event? What kinds of clothes you shop for from what locations. What your spending habits are like and what price ranges you look at. Whether you drive a car, walk or take the subway. Where you live and how far you’re willing to travel to purchase something.
Don’t believe me? I highly recommend downloading Google Takeout to get a glimpse into what they know about you. It’s a downloadable archive file that shows all the overt data that has been stored about you based on your cloud activity. This includes your location history, calendar events and Youtube profile.
The audacity of Google to spy on my Barbie movie preferences when that was clearly someone else using my account. I only watch the news.
But to the younger generation, that’s all fine and good. We’re willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience and we’ve proven it with every profile-creating, info-collecting website we’ve hastily agreed to let into our lives.
Well, what if I told you there’s more? Like, a lot more. Google is like that nosey friend who always wants to know what’s up with your relationships. What do you do when you break up with someone? You stop taking pictures with them and delete the ones you have. Google has access to the pictures on every phone you’ve ever gotten, stored in a file with timestamps and location stamps, even the deleted ones. They know when you’ve stopped seeing someone.
And since they have access to emails, they know when you’ve gotten a job, gotten fired or gotten an interview. They know your work circle and can gauge your relationship with each and every one of them based on the language you use.
And since they know how you look, what you like, what you hate, your entire social circle, your dreams and your fears, why not just add what you sound like into the mix? Do you have a Google Home? Here’s the good news, although it’s listening to you at all times, it doesn’t actually store anything when you’re not addressing it. The not so great news? Every time you speak, it records that soundbite and stores it on the cloud. You can go into your settings and delete it but anything that’s stored on the cloud can be accessed by them, deleted or not.
The end goal of such a comprehensive profile is money through targeted advertising. *Pretends to be shocked.*
Look at your Google Ad Settings for more information about what they think you like. Google will barrage you with those topics in every picture, website and video that they can sneak it into. They are not allowed to share your data with other companies and they don’t, under the law. However, they do the far more valuable thing and keep it to themselves, monopolizing consumer information and then letting other companies pay them so that they can then showboat that product or service to ideal customers.
In short? Google does not share your information, rife with everything about yourself that you can think of. They just exploit it for advertising purposes and social conditioning.
I hope this was helpful, I’m now off to watch Youtube for a few hours.