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Google Knows Where I Am and Everything Else I Do
This weekend Samsung alerted me that my cell phone was ready for an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1 which apparently also set the GPS receiver to "on". This morning I went out for a walk, loaded Google Maps, clicked "use GPS" and started walking. This was my first time with my own GPS unit and damn is it precise. On my walk home I realized Google now knows where I’ve been walking. While I didn’t login to use the Google Maps service, they could easily get that information.
XMCP wrote a post this weekend which looks at how Google tracks each of us as we use the net. Last year James Thomas devised a plan to go without using any of Google’s services and was able to turn off their tracking as well. XMCP’s post doesn’t include the mobile point I’ve noted above but does look at some of the elements of tracking. People talk about how worried they are about national ID cards - does Google know more about us than an ID card ever will? I like XMCP’s notes about Google Chrome.
Just how much does Google know? Ok for Google to control these many bits of data on each user no matter if they use it or not? Here’s my chart for easy reference:
- If you use Adwords, they know your marketing plan and they know your purchasing patterns.
- If you use Adsense, they know which of your sites makes money (though we know nothing sadly), they know how to target which ads to your site, they know how much to payout and how much to keep.
- If you use Alerts, they know what topics are important to you.
- If you use Analytics, they know which sites you control and/or monitor, how those sites are doing and every trend possible.
- If you use Blogger, they know what you write about. Every word, every phrase, every out and in link.
- If you use Calendar, they know where you have been, are, and plan to be.
- If you use Catalog search/Product Search, they know what items are of interest to you and which items you actually purchase.
- If you use Checkout, they know all of your personal information: name, address, phone, credit card, ccid.
- If you use Chrome, they know everything they didn’t already know about your browsing.
- If you use Desktop, they know what you have on your PC.
- If you use Docs and Spreadsheets, they know that you are writing a paper on 13th century france, and your checking account is $30 overdrawn.
- If you use Earth, they know where on the planet you desire to research.
- If you use FeedBurner, they know all about your readers and your readership levels.
- If you use Finance, they know what stocks (and other instruments) you own, which you monitor, and which trends you follow.
- If you use Gmail, they know everything. Yep, everything.
- If you use Groups, they know you have a fetish for rare steaks and love art from Paris.
- If you use Image search, they know that you like Britney Spears and you have a craving for chocolate babaka and cat photos.
- If you use Local search, they know where you are now, and what you are interested in.
- If you use Maps, they know where you might be, where you might be going, where you have been. And as noted above, if you have GPS, they know where you are at this exact moment.
- If you use Reader, they know what you are interested in.
- If you use Search (any Google search), Google knows every search you have ever made.
- If you use Talk, they know who your buddies are.
- If you use Toolbar, they know every web site you visit.
- If you use Translate, they know that you are learning German.
- If you use Video, the same applies as for YouTube.
- If you use YouTube, they know every video you have watched, what genres you like, which naughty videos you have watched, which ones you commented/favorited on, and the videos you have uploaded.
Please add your own Google tracking bits and I will update the post. (added Reader per comments)
:) I agree!
I use almost all of Google’s services, and I am convinced that they will rule the world for a while.
It is a bit creepy, but I am used to the idea they know everything about me.
By the way, I use Picasa for my pictures.
Bis bald,
Leo
And, if you use Google Reader ….. they know what you READ!!!
:)
Which is why I’ve given up caring. You can’t fight the Google monster.
that’s true!
This is what I was going to add as well, especially since that’s how I saw this post. They know what you read, what you think is most important, and when you read it.
No, Duncan Riley, you just can’t fight and ride it at the same time. You’ve made your choice, that’s all your giving up means. I, too, am riding the monster for now because they have the best mail interface I’ve found. Trouble is that data stored once is data stored forever, and we each have only one life, as far as we know.
Anybody who knows the first thing about freedom and privacy and what our ancestors (wherever you are in the world) went through to keep the shreds we have left alive, knows they would bleed all over again to prevent this much data from being stored in a single house. Of course, nobody who hasn’t done extracurricular research into the wars will never suspect the simple attitude which led to our most violent and life-changing revolutions: “Leave us well enough alone, and be sure to remain both smaller and less powerful than us, you public servants; political, religious and corporate.”
I’ve been posting details about online privacy, profiling, and the dangers of accumulating everything about everyone and tracking their every movement for months.
We are actively trading our privacy - and that could and is likely to eventually mean our FREEDOM - for all these “free” services that aren’t free. Remember that those who fail to study history are destined to repeat it and consider how much more efficiently we could all be rounded up and disposed of now than the Nazi’s were able to do with IBM holerith machines.
You all speak of Google as this “monster” to “fight”, but keep in mind that you choose to use every single service in this list. Every single one of these services has a terms of use and privacy policy that details what Google will and won’t do in providing the service to you, in regards to your data. Most people don’t read them — Google can’t make you read them, and the fact that most people don’t read them doesn’t make Google a monster. Maybe the monster to fight is user apathy.
Well said, Anonymous. The monster is always us. Without a strong dosage of apathy *and* participation, monsters cannot arise. That’s why you and I bother commenting on blog posts which Sergey Brin will never read.
Think bigger than Google. Bigger than countries. Get the real picture. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t care if Sergey or anyone else at Google reads what I post. It is those who are still asleep that I hope might become aware of where we are being led in time to stop following like sheep to the slaughter.
Bigger than countries? Bigger than Google? Could the Internet be a military project, with former NSA and CIA suits propping up Network Solutions and others? Yes, we know this. It’s too damn convenient to stop using. We’d need a whole new infrastructure, TCP/IP from the ground up.
Yes, either a whole new Internet, a huge sea-change among the lemmings, or the willingness to walk away completely from the system if it comes to that.
Ah, but as an Internet Strategist, could you walk away?
“We are moving to a Google that knows more about you.” (Google CEO Eric Schmidt, February 9, 2005)
Did you know that Gmail have “No Deletion Policy” for your emails? (Privacy Time Bomb @ Google)
You have forgotten the MOST important thing, the last link to finally get you:
picasa FACE recognition!!!!!
All the information about you and your person still are not much without an image. But with face recognition everything is there. You could be cloned without yourself knowing, the clone could replace you if you are in an important position and nobody would even notice! Isn’t that amazing?
Or maybe Google is just building the ultimate search and knowledge management system.
It’s up to everybody to decide. I use Google, but not for everything and I use several browsers for different parts of my life (work, private communication, leisure, etc.)
Anyway: Nice list, nice thoughts, keep it going and greetings from Germany.
Very nice list. The last thoughts of Oliver are veriy frightening. Waht if they are undermined by scientology.
Where is a democratic controll about this?
the fact that they *can*, doesn’t mean that they *do*.
It’s like saying ‘I’m not going to buy gas anymore, otherwise the gas companies know exactly where I’m going’.
True, but do they know who you mail things to? What you say to people in person? The internet/computers are one big matrix I have realized as well.
Huh? It’s not Google storing the data that’s the problem, it’s the fact that the data is being stored at all, and all in one place, and by people who can’t keep it in the barn (note: YouTube privacy scandal of 2008).
@Shamus - Yes, I can walk away because I know how to live a different life; one like our ancestors lived not so very long ago. Where people worked for themselves (physically) and were self-sufficient. Where they knew how to grow food, and build things, and cook, and bake, and sew,
And they knew we are what we eat so they wouldn’t settle for what passes as food in grocery stores knowing what it is doing to their health. They would take the time to grow non-GMO vegetables, plant fruit trees, build greenhouses, and most importantly plant abundantly and give it away freely so that others might start seeing the Light.
Where neighbors helped each other instead of turning each other in. Except for the Internet I have pretty much left “they system” already. If we’re wise we will use the Internet to locate others of like mind and build REAL communities in places far from the cities.
We will know to avoid Big Pharma and listen to the healing we were born with instead of the poisons they’re peddling. In the past month I know three people in their fifties who ended up in intensive care; one of them died. The only common factor is the prescription drugs they take. Even after extensive tests the hospital and Doctors found no cause for their stroke-like symptoms. (And I have knowledge of very few people offline so three is an astounding number.)
Still don’t believe me? These people are caretakers for parents in their seventies who are healthier than they are! The children are dying in their 50s and 60s while the parents who grew up on farms eating eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy and living to be 70, 80 or even 90. (70 if they take prescription drugs; 90 if they don’t. 80 if they didn’t take them until recently.)
They started this nonsense that butter is bad for you, eggs are bad for you, everything natural is bad for you back in the 60s. They are WRONG. Eat REAL butter, WHOLE milk, eggs from chickens that run around outside. You can SEE the eggs are healthier - the yolks are almost orange instead of that sickly pale yellow of the caged chickens that never see daylight. Get healthy naturally.
The illusion of America is actually a Republic - not a Democracy - which would be good if it were real. Do you truly want the majority dictating what you do? Answer that again when the majority you were becomes a minority. In reality the world is a plutocracy: he who controls the money supply controls the world.
Do the naive among you really think that they won’t use everything in their power to continue controlling us all? Will the masses continue to believe it is all about money and not power?
Some of us will opt out. Maybe they’ll ignore us if we go quietly. Maybe they’ll hunt us down. Regardless, preserving freedom is worth it. I’ve found The Way. I hope you will too.
The single biggest challenge would be convincing people to stop their apathy and participation, and in the case of Google each of these will be challenged by the love of money.
Although my AdSense check shrinking more than 80% (upon changing nothing other than which Google Account is associated with the code blocks) is more than enough incentive to walk away from that side of their revenue, AdWords continues to be the highest ROI puller for myself and many others.
Therefore, step 1 seems to be the abundance you mentioned; wherever there is abundance, economy simply goes away. Too many avocado pears? They don’t make it to the store shelves, but are given away to friends and neighbors as gifts. Too few? They sell for +$2 each out here and are stolen from people’s yards. JavaScript is a good example of an unchained resource; see any effect you like and there is usually an open-source library by a very happy developer a few keystrokes away. Beach sand and water from the sky are other examples; there is nary a problem with crime or greed related to those resources.
If we collectively decided to provide energy in such abundance that it would be pointless to fight for it (via solar, geothermal, wind, tidal and wave), would anyone doubt there are bullets to be dodged?
My mother has lived her life by that mantra of butter and eggs being bad for you, but never took their pills, either. This week she was diagnosed with hypoglycemia and possibly diabetes; the doctors suspect a lack of protein and sent her home to eat 3 eggs first of all. So, your post hit a cord; you’re dead right. All those ‘bad’ natural foods are good for us.
Abundance is good for us, too. Technology need not replace jobs; there need not be jobs, only the pursuit of technology to power abundance of anything we lack. Compare this with the scarcity promoted and ensured by patents, corporations, law firms, governments, production tax or outright limitations, and trade agreements. I guess that’s why they have The Bomb, though, and have proven a willingness to use it to preserve “our way of life.” What’s more American than the American Dream? What’s the Dream without Money? Boom.
I hope the folks whose blog this is don’t mind our continuing discussion here. I have to warn you about Google AdWords. Few understood that system better than I did and I highly recommend you read a post Bob Cringely did at PBS about Google being the next Microsoft.
Be VERY careful using AdWords. I once made a living at it and now I do not accept anyone’s money to risk it in a system created to take money from unsuspecting advertisers in a highly deceitful way.
What few see is that governments and laws have been used to suppress new business (by protecting existing businesses from competition), prevent abundance by the “common” people, reduce our liberties, and keep innovations from challenging their cash cows related to oil.
There is no reason we couldn’t have had cars that run on electricity, get over 100mpg, or have solar panels on the roof (have you seen that one) decades ago.
There is no good reason government couldn’t have supported solar and wind power - again, decades ago. The technology has been available that long. If they think we buy that it wasn’t worth pursuing financially they underestimate at least some of us.
You want to feel better - go buy some eggs from an old-timer who still keeps chickens that wander the yard. That is how I found out. I inherited some hens when I moved and had tons of eggs so I ate tons of eggs. I immediately had more energy and felt better.
The bottom line is that there is abundance enough for all - just not for the wealthy hoarding them to control - or even starve - the rest of the world. We can change the world now if more would stay home and GROW FOOD and share it with their neighbors.
The plutocracy is intentionally starving people around the world with their incentives to grow exportable crops they can make money on instead of growing food for their own people. All this nonsense about factory farming being necessary to feed the world is another con game.
Turning corn into fuel is the latest plan to drive food prices out of reach of more than most can imagine in a country (the U.S.A.) whose number one food source is CORN. (See the book The Omnivores Dilemma.) Ridiculous when all the corn in production when they started this nonsense would only replace 15% of the fuel used. It probably takes more fuel to grow the corn than the fuel it replaces. (No time to look it up right now.)
Maybe someday they’ll wake up. Perhaps interested parties can join me in this discussion elsewhere. I am GrowMap at FriendFeed and Twitter. I recommend FriendFeed for in depth discussions.
Very well put. To conclude our exchange here on CN, I’d be glad for people realizing one thing: Scarcity is often faked outright (as with diamonds) or forced, either via active suppression of alternatives (as with fuel) or straight up invention of limitations and markets to support and foster them.
For example, I was approached to develop a carbon emissions credit exchange, despite the fact we’ve only had weather balloons for 60 years and know the average global temperature has been cooling for the past 10. Of course, not many people realize those scary CO2 readings climbing up and up are all from the Mauna Loa Observatory, just a few hundred meters from the largest volcano on earth, which is currently active. Doh. More on these sorts: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
You said “maybe they’ll wake up,” but public companies have to be excluded from that possibility. Google, to circle back to our subject matter, cannot afford to wake up because less scarcity-oriented AdWords principles would drop their share price next quarter. As a private company they wouldn’t have a problem using their abundance of traffic to provide an awesome business model to all involved, especially themselves. How sad that being listed on that gambling board known as the stock exchange transferred their loyalties to gamblers which bet on higher consumption (shareholders) rather than end users.
See you on FF!
I have a G1 Google Phone, I guess they know who and much I call too.
Hi Allen, there’s another privacy breach, perhaps even more significant… “web beacons”.
Your page here calls third-party services from Google Ad Services, Google Analytics, Yahoo, Digg, many others. Once a graphic, script or chunk of HTML is called, that remote server knows the IP address to which it is sent. Servers which deliver to a significant number of the world’s webpages can thus gain knowledge of how a particular session with a particular IP address hops across the web. As soon as it cross-checks with a service which requires your name, bingo.
Setting up an ad-blocker in your browser is now a necessity for maintaining your surfing privacy.
If you use Book search they know which type of books you like and which ones you might buy.
All the above combined with the factor “frequency” makes even a more detailed profile out of your activity.
If you search more for books than CDs, why not offer book related ads instead of CD?
If you check out Mexico more often than Thailand, why not offer Mexico Travel ads instead of Thai?
Google does know everything!
RE: “If you use Search (any Google search), Google knows every search you have ever made.”
Is “search” becoming or has it become a proxy for “think”?
I really love/hate Google Trends (although I love/hate the program I use at work even more - Hitwise) and I’m always struck by the way that popular searches - after you get past single words - begin to resemble a stream of consciousness novel…
now i don’t know if there are millions of people jacked up on benzedrine, in homage to the late great Jack Kerouac, but i doubt it….
it seems more likely to me that people are searching so quickly and thoughtlessly (obviously, google is ubiquitous-why think about it? well.. apart from in this forum) that they literally type out their inner most thoughts. And not just that, they/we type it out as they/we actually think it….
que raro es esto mundito
Glad they can do all that.
This whole paranoia that ‘google is out to get me’ and ‘google will rule the world’ is pure paranoia. T
To think that anyone cares that much about you and what you do is based on our societies tendency to be so self obsessed and so far up our own arse’s we don’t think to look at the real problems in our life, we don’t see our complete lack of compassion for others and the world around us.
It’s not Google, and it’s worldwide domination thats the problem. It’s the fact we spend day after day, working behind desks, staring at computer screens, interacting with others via virtual means.
Sure Google has power. But does it really care what you do with your time, where you walk, what yo browse, & what you type? With the amount of data generated daily by users worldwide, each individual is a grain of sand on a very, very long and deserted beach.
They may be able to analyse us as a whole, and use that to their advantage. But this personal paranoia is ludicrious. Nobody is as interested in your life as you. Not even google!
You forgot orkut, which is something like MySpaces and Facebook.
thanks - good point
“This whole paranoia that ‘google is out to get me’ and ‘google will rule the world’ is pure paranoia.”
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not following me.
Paranoia? That’s not it at all. Quoting from Shamus:
Anybody who knows the first thing about freedom and privacy and what our ancestors (wherever you are in the world) went through to keep the shreds we have left alive, knows they would bleed all over again to prevent this much data from being stored in a single house.
Of course, nobody who hasn’t done extracurricular research into the wars will ever suspect the simple attitude which led to our most violent and life-changing revolutions: “Leave us well enough alone, and be sure to remain both smaller and less powerful than us, you public servants; political, religious and corporate.”
No, its like the gas companies over a period of time requiring you fit devices to your car which record where your car is in realtime, …
… and where you are, where you like to go on holidays, whether you have had any recent health problems, what diet and how much alcohol you like, etc…
… and each gas company refusing to let you have any gas unless you have such devices fitted and part with the above information…
… and whether, on drawing 2 lines the sand, one with “normal” gas companies, and one with gas companies as above, you’d find the second reality so repulsive compared to the first that you’d feel like saying…
“Ohne mich. Without me. I’m going to buy a bicycle with a basket and a child seat.”
Or feel quite at ease with such a scenario - everything changes after all. Remember Google’s Terms and Conditions will allow Google to share information with third party companies and/or government agency, present and future
Funny, but true.
Here is the creepiest part:
if your friends use Gmail or it knows about you too. So they are watching you if even you don’t use Google services. Then they buy another company like postlini (spam filter) and read your spam etc etc etc
Year 2020: “Buy your privacy from Google, 5$/mo to hide your naked photos”
One other note:
It can be in 2020 some of your comments or blog posts will be out of context. Say you blame war in 2008 but in 2020 it is considered a weakness and dishonor - means you will never become a president. This is a bit simplified example but if you step further 2040 , 2060 many things will be re-thought and proven wrong and bad - the things you are so excited and sure right now. Back to Google - it has it all collected and organized.
This is way overblown. Information from most of these services are not used and/or anonymous.
There is nothing ‘creepy’ about any of it. This sort of data capture has been going on for years from many of the major players both online and offline.
If you’re not creeped out by privacy invasion, why did you post anonymously? Hahah! But let’s have a look at your two points:
1. “Information from most of these services are not used and/or anonymous.”
I guarantee that any service you are not paying for is there for no other business purpose than the collection of, and intentional use of, personal data most users, like yourself, are unaware is being used. For example, Google’s telephone directory inquiry they openly admit is to collect voice recognition data, linked with geo-location data to get a feel for neighborhood’s influence on accent and pronunciation; this so that accurate mining of YouTube video spoken text can be done far better, of course to fine-tune their Adware.
Adware is not an overstatement when an installed piece of software like Google Desktop or Chrome uses local data to contribute to ad targeting without most user’s knowledge.
2. There is nothing ‘creepy’ about any of it when ‘major players’ capture your personal data.
Then why are ‘minor players’ quickly branded Spyware and filtered by security software?
Look at the upside here: When the time comes to write your autobiography, all you’ll need to do is sign in to iGoogle and choose File>Export>Entire Life As XML.
Ahaahahaha! Brilliant :p and likely true.
What ?? Citing “The Telegraph” to support your climate-change denial theory ?? Sorry mate, now you’ve lost all your credibility…
I trust everyone on here is intelligent enough to recognize a weak attack is one which shoots the messenger (or, more hilariously, the messenger’s publisher) and avoids discussing any points of the message itself.
We can now look back at 2008, which was supposed to be the hottest year on record according to warmists hype beforehand: Australia had the coldest August in 35 years, A town in South Africa had the coldest September night - ever, Denver set two record lows, Charlotte had the coldest November in 32 years and record cold hit Montana. More? It’s common knowledge that we’ve been cooling since 1998.
Of course, those climbing carbon readings are coming from near the very rim of the world’s largest active volcano. You can look that one up yourself. Happy new year :) Good luck with this year’s weather, alarmist ;p. Remember we’ve only had air balloons for 60 years and relax.
You are right! A friend told me recently that Google keeps all of this information about every person indefinitely. They know all this info about you and they never, ever erase it! This seems pretty alarming to me. What is the name of a search engine that erases the info every 24 hours?
Don’ t you think we should have to give Google permission to keep info and that they should pay us big bucks to keep it?
48h close enough? Same results, and you can get the FireFox search box plugin:
http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
I use Google Search and Books all the time…for work. The results have nothing whatsoever to do with my personal interests — they reflect research I am doing while editing manuscripts. So the data they may be compiling isn’t necessarily connected to my personal sense of privacy.
Now my Gmail account, that’s another story.
Sorry babes but there isn’t much here in the way of news