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Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

theguardian.com

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Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#81

Post by gowld »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #43
skummetmaelk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been any statement from anyone even remotely involved with data collection at Google on what "pausing" these collection options actually does internally? I somehow find it hard to believe that they don't just collect it anyway and only "pause" displaying inferences made using the data to you.

In a lot of cases, from my understanding, disabling storing data about "your account" just stores data about you with an anonymous identifier. For example, voice search history you can enable or disable, if you enable it, you can see and listen to all your queries and delete them if you so choose. If you disable the history, Google still stores recordings of your voice and uses it to "improve their service", they jus…

A citation would be helpful, as I don't see voice mentioned on the help page for "Share usage & diagnostics information with Google"

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6078260?hl=en

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#82

Post by blhack »

efdee wrote: post #73
halayli wrote: post #68

This is where a legit issue start to turn into clickbait weak journalism.

I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss it as clickbait. Do you really think non-tech people are aware of the amount of aggregated data these companies have on them?

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the article uses scare tactics that misrepresent what google is actually storing.

They are storing your emails, for instance, and your photos.

This isn't google tracking you any more than a storage unit company is stealing from you.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#83

Post by Mc_Big_G »

halayli wrote: post #68

This is where a legit issue start to turn into clickbait weak journalism.

I'm sure many non-technical users will find the article very informative. "Clickbait" implies that the headline is controversial but the content is not. Clearly the content here is extremely controversial, especially if you had no idea that Google is literally tracking your every physical move. On the contrary, I found the article a pretty good list of the information Google and FB have and that's what the title implied. Not clickbait at all.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#84

Post by peterwwillis »

"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 – to hell with it! – I want to watch cute dog videos."

You can get people to do anything with the right incentives.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#85

Post by gowld »

Splines wrote: post #62
skummetmaelk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been any statement from anyone even remotely involved with data collection at Google on what "pausing" these collection options actually does internally? I somehow find it hard to believe that they don't just collect it anyway and only "pause" displaying inferences made using the data to you.

I don't have any evidence whatsoever but I speculate that between the options of: 1. collecting data and hiding it during times it was paused 2. checking if data collection is paused during collection time and keeping it/throwing it away Option (2) is the easiest and most foolproof. For (1), all it takes is a single tiny bug in any code that handles your data history and their whole privacy stance is shot.

How can these statemens both be true? "(2) is the easiest and most foolproof"

That doesn't seem any easier; as hiding is harder than checking a bit and discarding at collection time.

"For (1), all it takes is a single tiny bug in any code that handles your data history and their whole privacy stance is shot."

That doesn't sound foolproof at all.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#86

Post by MajorSauce »

_zero wrote: post #65
untog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I may be alone in this, but I expect that everything I do on the Internet is done in public. Nothing new here. So how do you send private messages? Carrier pigeon? Even Signal uses the internet, after all.

If I want to send a private message, I'd use Signal since the cellphone company has logs of your text messages. I really like that there's an option to delete your messages after a certain amount of time. Though I only use it over WiFi. There's also Tor, which I use in combination with an obscure e-mail service that allows you to create accounts and login over Tor. If you want to encrypt the actual email message, the…

FYI, if you have privacy-oriented friends, you could use Silence (https://silence.im/) for SMS communications.

Once keys have been exchanged, it switches to AES encryption with your peers, so carriers will only log a blob of encrypted text.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#87

Post by deadbunny »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40
danarmak wrote: post #24

This is nonsensical: > The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents. > Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents. This link [Google Takeout] includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve t…

Google has tons of data on you that isn't available in Takeout as well. (So does Facebook.) Bear in mind, these companies know which ads they've shown you and when, for example, and at least in one case, buys your credit card transaction history to compare your purchases with the ads you've seen.

Very much this. I downloaded my data from Facebook last week, and as you say, it's just stuff I have shared and not any of the tracking/profile stuff. Can't say I was surprised at all.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#88

Post by teamhappy »

ForHackernews wrote: post #70
teamhappy wrote: post #51

Kind of shitty that they didn't mention that you can delete the data from your Google account and disable further data collection (at least for the stuff mentioned in the article). I guess that would have made the article more informative and less scary.

Can you? Does that actually delete data from Google's database? Or does it just flip a switch so the won't serve you "personalized" ads based on that data?

I don't know what really happens when you click the delete button but I assume it does what is says. Why would they offer to delete the data and then not do so? Some intern finding out about that would cause a PR disaster and maybe even legal trouble. Doesn't seem worth it, they could have just not added the feature then.

Re: Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

#89

Post by radiorental »

halayli wrote: post #68

This is where a legit issue start to turn into clickbait weak journalism.

I think that's an unfair assessment. While this is the perfectly easy to access data we, hackernews savvys, are familiar with and isn't insight to the true analysis we know Google has internally. Don't dismiss this as something your average Guardian reader is aware of.
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