The beginning of a new era
Thanks to the revelations by Edward Snowden we have gotten more information about the big corporations and what kind of data they collect when you are using their services, and how this information is used by both governments and other third-parties.
This has lead to the companies being a little bit more “transparent” about what kinds of data they collect about you.
I have compiled a list of data-points that Google publicly admits collecting to give you, the reader, a little more insight on what they know about you. It is broken down into three categories of information they collect about you;
Things you do, things you “create” and who you are.
Things you do:
- Everything you search for, this includes Google searches, YouTube searches, even location searches in Google Maps.
- All of the websites you visit, both when you click a link in your search results and also through the Google Analytics tracking pixels placed on websites to measure and analyze the website traffic.
- Every video you have ever watched on YouTube, how long you watch for, which parts of the videos you view again, the spots in the videos where you pause, the comments and replies you write, how you react to the videos and who you subscribe to.
- Every ad you have been presented and which of them you have clicked.
- Your real-world position (location).
- What types of devices you use and the versions of the software they have installed.
- Your IP-address(es) and website cookies from other pages you visit.
Things you create:
- All of the emails you send and receive while using Gmail, this includes all metadata the emails contain and also email attachments you send and receive.
- All contacts you add in Gmail, Google+ and people you save in your phone contacts. (if you use an Android phone)
- All events added to your calendar and the information you provide about them.
- All of the files you upload, including but not limited to; Images, videos, documents, PDFs, compressed files, executables and all of the information they contain.
- Every document, spreadsheet and presentation you create using Google Documents and all of the information they contain
Who you are:
- Your name
- Your email accounts
- Your "secret" passwords
- Your age / date of birth
- Your gender
- Your phone number(s)
- Your country of origin
If you use the Google Chrome browser, every website you visit will be logged and the same goes for all forms you fill in, even if you don’t use their services or if you visit websites without tracking pixels. Information about downloads and uploads on other websites and services not provided by Google will also be collected and stored when using Chrome.
As I mentioned earlier, this is the data Google openly admits to collecting about you. I have no doubt in my mind that they are collecting even more data which we are not being told about.
So with this being said, remember to be careful when browsing the world wide web and when using tools and services connected to the Internet, you never know what information could be used against you in the future.
Thanks for reading my post, I hope you enjoyed it. Leave a comment if you would like to see more posts like this from me. Thank you.
Data sources used in this article:
Google.com - Datacollection | How Google uses your personal information
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