By Prarthana Mitra
We’ve always known about Google has “Big Brother” like habits when it comes to harvesting data based on user’s online activities, searches, comments and any other pattern of communication— all the while claiming to improve and optimise user experience online. However, latest findings in light of the Cambridge Analytica blow-up, which has plunged fellow tech giant Facebook in a sea of controversies, prompted many users to download their data from the social networking site, only to make an alarming discovery about the sheer volume of personal call history and text message meta-records harvested and logged by Facebook. But Facebook is not the first or the only program collecting your personal data.
Google’s data collection
A similar experiment with Google accounts, conducted by web developer Dylan Curran revealed the extent of this data collection, noting that every mail he had ever sent, even the ones he had categorised as spam, was lodged in the 5.5GB worth of metadata downloadable for perusal.
Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Google has access to your bookmarks, emails, contacts, photos, voice records, movement and search history. Additionally, with your consent, Google also collects information from the host of Google apps on your phone that permits the company to further access, harness and store all other data from your Google Calendar, Google hangout sessions, GPS-enabled location history, the music you listen to on YouTube and Google Music, the Google books you’ve purchased, your Google Drive files, the Google+ groups you’re in, the websites and mail accounts you’ve created, the businesses and products you’ve bought from and/or through Google, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared— the list is endless. This intensive record-keeping begins from the moment you downloaded the application/s on your phone or signed into your Google account or the first time. In fact, you can see your own data if you follow this link: google.com/takeout
It is clear that Google has a reservoir of our personal information far more detailed and invasive than we could have imagined. This begs a series of critical questions: how long can we ignore the grave danger this puts us in? Is this dedication “to make its services better for end users” just a powerful marketing strategy? More importantly, what else can Google possibly have on us?
What else do they know?
Additionally, along with your personal information, Google is also possibly aware of your sleeping pattern, possible weight, relationship status and religious/sexual orientation due to your search history. The company even has all the information you deleted under the pretext of acting as a backup.
This means that laying your hands on someone’s Google account essentially means you know the makings of that person and everything they might have done in their life.
Upon discovering the extent of data Google has about individuals, Curran tweeted ”this is one of the craziest things about the modern age, we would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us, but we just went ahead and did it ourselves because … I want to watch cute dog videos.”
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