Google knows a lot about you. What does Google know about you? What data does Google collect about users?

When you take any action on Google services, we collect data about them. For more information about what information we collect, why we do it, and how you can manage your information, please read our Privacy Policy. It also explains why the shelf life of different types of data is not the same.

You can delete some data at any time yourself, others are deleted automatically, and we store the third for a long time if necessary. If you delete any data, we act in accordance with special rules. As a result, your data completely disappears from our servers or is stored there only in an anonymized form. How Google Anonymizes Data

What information we keep until you delete it

There are many tools that allow you to manage the data that is stored in your Google account. In particular, you can:

delete entries on the My Activities page;
delete photos, documents and other content;
delete various products from your Google account;
delete your Google account completely.

The data will remain in your Google account until you delete it. If you use our services without signing in to your Google Account, you may also remove some information, such as information about your use of our services using a particular device, browser, or application.

Data that is stored for a specific period of time

In some cases, we do not provide the ability to delete any data, but keep it for a certain period of time. The retention period for all types of information depends on the purpose of its collection. For example, in order for service interfaces to be displayed correctly on the screens of different devices, we can store information about the height and width of the browser for up to 9 months. Some data is anonymized during the specified storage period. For example, advertising data stored in server logs will remove part of the IP address after 9 months, and information about cookies after 18 months.

Information retained until the Google account is deleted

Some information allows us to better understand how we can improve our services and how users experience them, so we store it for the duration of the Google account. For example, if you delete a specific Google search on the My Activity page, information about how often you use the search might be saved, but not about what you were looking for. When you close your Google account, your search frequency information is also deleted.

Information that is stored for a long time for specific purposes

Some information that is intended for specific purposes, we store for a long time in accordance with the law or business requirements. For example, if Google makes a payment to you or receives funds from you, the relevant data is stored for as long as necessary for tax or accounting purposes. Some purposes for which data may be stored for long periods of time:

Safe and complete deletion of data

As soon as a user erases data from their Google Account, we immediately proceed to delete them from the corresponding service and all our systems. First of all, we exclude any possibility of viewing the data and using it to personalize your experience with Google services. For example, if you clear a video you've watched on the My Activity page, YouTube won't be able to tell you when the video stopped playing.

Next, we start the process of safely and completely deleting data from our storage systems. Thanks to it, we can provide protection against accidental data loss, as well as peace of mind for users. The entire procedure usually takes about two months. In this case, there is often a period that allows you to restore data if they were deleted unintentionally. It usually lasts up to one month.

If you contact Google by contacting support, providing feedback, or submitting a bug, we may store this information

Examples

You sent feedback in Gmail, Drive, or another Google app

Does not collect information for sale, or even more so in the interests of some universal conspiracy.

Everything is much more prosaic: personal information helps to determine the tastes and habits of users. To do this, Google stores data about the gender, age, interests, as well as user search queries, including voice ones.

For example, after analyzing the requests of a single person, search system will offer goods or services related to the object of previous requests. For example, if a user was looking for where to buy a smartphone, then contextual advertising will offer accessories for this phone model.

Another object of controversy is the collection of information about the location of its customers by the “corporation of good”, which makes especially nervous ones constantly turn off the transfer of geodata.

Google collects data on the movement of users using their own smartphones: when using, for example, the service Google Maps the owner of the device gives out his location. The time during which a particular user was in a certain place, and even the speed of movement, is recorded.

Thanks to this information, the search engine will issue places that provide certain services closest to the user, again consistent with his interests.

Not everyone will like the fact that a huge multinational corporation has so much of his personal data. Of course, you can turn off some of the "tracking" services, but most are unlikely to refuse, for example, watching videos on YouTube just so that Google does not recognize the user's preferences.

One example of users outraged by the “violation of confidentiality” was Anton Burkov, who filed a lawsuit against Google for the fact that the corporation, in his opinion, read his personal correspondence. Burkov demanded 50 thousand rubles from the company. for moral damage. decided to recover the entire amount from the defendant, but Google's lawyers appealed the court's decision. As a result, the Moscow City Court dismissed the company's claim, obliging Google to pay 50 thousand rubles. However, the company can still appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

However, Google is far from the only company accumulating the personal data of its customers.

The number of companies that “monitor” the users of their services also includes, which not so long ago was subjected to a flurry of criticism due to the huge amount of data collected latest version operating system from Microsoft - Windows 10.

How to relate to the collection of data by organizations whose services are used by tens of millions of people every day is an open question. On the one hand, in the event of a software failure or hacking of data storages by hackers, the scale of the "drain" of personal information will be simply catastrophic: the confidential data of millions of people will become public, and the corporation that leaked will be inundated with lawsuits from outraged users. Of course, each company does everything possible to prevent such incidents.

On the other hand, the collection of personal data brings the quality of the services offered to a new level. This practice allows a simple user to "surf" the Internet with much greater comfort, helps to separate the "wheat from the chaff" and generally speeds up the search for information.

It is worth noting that the privacy policy of each corporation that collects this or that data about its customers indicates all the information that the user allows to store when confirming the conditions; if such an agreement seems unacceptable, there is always the opportunity to reject the terms of use.

An example of unauthorized access to users' personal information is the case of social network Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg's company experimented with the emotional state of users

In 2014, the company set up an experiment to influence the emotional state of people by filtering positive and negative posts in the feed without notifying its users.

This incident had a negative impact on the image of the corporation itself: the company had to create an internal commission on ethical and legal issues of experiments, and retraining of personnel in this area was also carried out.

In general, we can say that there is nothing in the collection of personal data that could harm the average user: for the most part, this process is carried out to improve the quality of the services provided. So it's too early to talk about "Big Brother".

Collecting user data allowed Google at one of its annual developer conferences to announce several of its new developments: an assistant that can make phone appointments and set up suggestions on Google Maps, a feature that will complete sentences for you.

The development of such technologies has largely become possible thanks to the massive collection of data. Google services collect data from billions of users every day. This is one of the conditions for using free services. Many people don't even think about it. But the one who owns the information owns the world.

Google has seven products, each with at least 1 billion monthly active users, and they can't operate without access to user data. According to a Morning Consult survey, this helped make Google one of the most famous brands in the world.

The well-known Cambridge Analytica scandal led to a tightening of privacy laws, and the company at the center of the scandal was declared bankrupt.

Google is on thin ice

Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie says:

"Search and mobile devices equipped Google Play perfectly understand their user. This understanding is achieved through the collection and storage of your personal data.

Facebook had a stated policy for the last three years that most of us found acceptable until Cambridge Analytica came to light."

Where does the data come from?

The more Google products you use, the more data Google may collect about you. Whether it's Gmail, operating system Android for smartphones, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Maps and, of course, Google Search - the company collects gigabytes of data about you.

Google offers free access to its services by showing you targeted ads that generated $31.2 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2018 alone.

The company's data collection practices also include email scanning to extract keyword data for use in other products and Google services and to improve its machine learning capabilities. This information was confirmed by the representative of Google Aaron Stein.

“We can analyze [email] content to fine-tune search results to better detect spam and malware,” he added.

But that's not all. Google claims that it is also using some of its datasets to "help build the next generation of next-generation AI solutions." On Tuesday, Google released "Smart Replies," in which artificial intelligence helps users complete sentences.

Consultant for information technology Dylan Curran recently uploaded everything he had on Facebook and received a 600mb file. A similar file with personal data from Google was 5.5 gigabytes, which is nine times more!

“This is one of the craziest things in the modern era, we would never allow a government or a corporation to put cameras or microphones in our homes or track location on us, but we went ahead and did it ourselves because… I want to watch videos of cute kitties and dogs,” Curran wrote.

What does Google guarantee?

The Company has set various limits on the use of this data. The company does not sell your personal information, anonymizes user data after 18 months, and invites users to delete some or all of the collected personal data. These innovations make it harder for marketers who are trying to identify your beliefs, sexual interests, or personal difficulties.

However, this does not prevent the company from selling advertising itself, the reach of which can be narrowed down to the user's zip code. Combined with enough other interest categories and user behaviors, it's easier for Google advertisers to identify the target audience, and thus create the most successful advertising campaigns.

What can you do about it?

Users can see and limit the data collected by Google by changing their advertising preferences.

The internet giant offers customizable controls to opt out of being tracked by Google's advertising cookie, as well as restrict whether you show targeted ads based on your interest groups and categories. You can also view and delete many personal tracking data about yourself, including your entire search history and any geolocation data that may have tracked your every physical move if you are signed into Google services on your phone.

"We provide users with controls to remove individual items, services, or their entire account," Stein told Google. “When a user decides to delete data, we go through a process over time to safely and completely remove it from our systems, including backups. We save some data with an account Google user such as when and how they use certain features, as long as Account will not be deleted."

Google does not hide the fact that it will know about its users, if not all, then a lot. Even when you created your account, you were warned that your search history, YouTube views, audio information, purchases, contacts, call data will be tracked. That's just spelled out all this in a multi-page agreement, which not everyone can read to the end.

Google explains that all this is done in order to adapt to users and make products more convenient. For example, to provide customized offers, content or applications. But most importantly, the information is used to select the most tailored advertising for you.

Why Google Tracking is Dangerous

You should limit the data that Google collects by default, if only because your personal information may fall into the wrong hands. And not only if someone hacks the account.

Your information may be leaked to the Internet. Through your own fault

So, in July, the Yandex search engine indexed files from the Google Docs service that were not protected by privacy settings. included in Google Docs files. The first thing users found through a Yandex search was passwords. Passwords to personal and work accounts in social networks, to e-mail and other services turned out to be in the public domain. In addition, the numbers of electronic wallets were found in the documents. However, all password-protected documents did not appear in the search results. The leak occurred due to the negligence of the users themselves.

Your information may be passed on to third parties. Perfectly legal

The user agreement clearly states to whom Google can share your confidential information:

Private companies, if you have given your consent. An example from Google: "If you contacted a driver call service using Google Home, we will provide your address to this service only with your permission."
Google affiliates and other trusted companies and persons to process on behalf of Google.
Law enforcement agencies, security forces, the FSB.
Publishers, advertisers, developers. Example from Google: “We provide this information so that users can learn about trends in the use of our services. In addition, we allow selected partners to collect information from your browser or device using their own cookies and other technologies and use it to display ads and measure their effectiveness.”

Why Google is tracking you

The task of Google, like any commercial structure in this world, is to make money. One way is to sell ads more effectively. To do this, the service collects a huge amount of information about everything. After all, you register and use the product for free, and for each you have to pay for free, one way or another.

An excerpt from Google's user agreement:

How to get rid of Google tracking

If you just got tired of Google ads that offer you products for your needs (you never know what and when you were looking for and don’t want to advertise it), you can disable personalization. For this . But this does not mean that Google will stop collecting information on you. It will just be less of a concern.

However, any user can ban Google not only to offer advertising, but also to collect information.

For Google to stop tracking entirely(in any case, according to the parameters that he officially talks about), just what is now enabled by default.

If you are ready to provide information about your preferences on YouTube, but do not want to be listened to, then the following instructions are for you:

To access your personal dossier, you need to log into your account,

Here are collected settings for search queries and pages viewed; the places you have visited; information from devices; voice requests and commands; the video you searched for and watched on YouTube.

All data from the microphone of your phone is stored. Just say "OK Google" once, and everything that interests you will become known to advertisers.

It is known that the American search engine collects information about users and their actions. But what exactly does Google know about you? How to remove information about yourself and your actions from the Google server? information in our article.

What does Google know about you?

To analyze the collected data, you need to go to this address. According to Google, this information is available only to the owner of the account, about which there is a corresponding inscription on the site.

For mobile phone under Android, the list of recorded user actions is impressive. Everything is taken into account: from watching YouTube videos to opening applications.

Go to More activities on Google and select Location History (manage history hyperlink) .

Here are collected all your movements around the world over the past few years.

How to Delete Google User Statistics

From the menu on the left, select Choose an uninstall option.

Select the period and criteria for selecting the actions to be deleted and click the Delete button.

How dangerous is Google tracking?

It is clear that when using the services of any company, you trust it to collect certain data about yourself. If you don't want the pages you visit to be recorded, use secure browsers or Incognito mode. On the phone, you can additionally disable the collection of information about movement.

It is worth seeing what the American service knows about you in order to understand the importance of ensuring the security of your account. If you have a simple password, change it to a more complex one. Take safety more seriously. But if anything, now we know where you can erase all the accumulated information.

The practical benefit of such surveillance is the ability to control your child's account, if there is access to it. You can see what videos he watches, what sites he goes to. At the same time, there is no serious violation of the privacy of the correspondence. Google will record that you used the VKontakte application, but will not be able to read the messages.