Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

support.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 117 posts

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#101

Post by olliej »

lunchables wrote: post #2

Am I overreacting by seriously considering starting the process of migrating from gmail? It's not this singular incident of course, but just the continued pattern of behavior from Google for the last couple years. I really have lost all faith in them respecting their users.

I dropped Gmail years ago, but mostly because my only real reason for still having a google account at all was reader. By that point gmail had just become my spam bin

These days I host my own anyway, and have a blargh@host mail account I use to sign up for things (typically blargh+thewebstie@host so I can track who is selling email addresses)

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#102

Post by beaner »

colanderman wrote: post #96
beaner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have my email receipts, what's the difference? I use venmo - they have it too. My credit card companies are private companies. Where's the outrage regarding them? Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news.

> What you're spreading is fake news. I suggest avoiding this phrase if you are trying to have a serious debate. It's overused to the point of obnoxiousness, and doesn't even apply here. (The person you replied to posed a question. Questions are not "news", nor can be described as "fake".)

The question was based on an assumption that the data is shared. It was that assumption that I was calling out, an assumption that is very much in the news, and which is untrue, but also known to be untrue by some and still promoted, making it fake.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#103

Post by ardy42 »

geekrax wrote: post #94

Just one perspective: When it comes to scraping data and storing in single entity (Google servers), it's more about powering the ecosystem than a single client or the UI. Google doesn't just live in a single client. As a user (by giving up my privacyto Google), I can ask my Google home how my day is while getting ready for work. I can see the status of my flight tomorrow in my Google app (or Google home screen in And…

> Imagine how much friction it'd require to setup such devices if everything was processed on client side or required explicit opt-in before accessing the info.

Gmail's basically parsing emails, so I don't think it would be that hard to do client-side if there was a community effort to create and maintain the parsers. That's certainly doable, because ad-block lists have some of the same characteristics and are community maintained.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#104

Post by ardy42 »

the_snooze wrote: post #60
jhall1468 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by respect? Your privacy? Move to Fastmail if that's what your after. You are using a free service, because you are the product. That's not about respect, it's about your (lack) of understanding of the business relationship you entered. If you aren't comfortable with that, you're going to have to pay actual money.

What assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting your privacy? It wasn’t that long ago that we found out that telecom companies were selling fine location data of all their paying customers. The reality is that irresponsibility and disrespect for users are rampant in the tech world. That’s entirely companies’ doing.

> What assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting your privacy?

If you use a free service, you basically have assurances that they're not respecting your privacy. The probability of a paid service respecting your privacy is greater than zero, at least.

Also, not all paid services are created equal. You still have to do more due diligence past just throwing money at someone who'll take it.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#105

Post by jonnytran »

Why has the title and link of this post changed?

It used to link here: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases

The title used to be, "Google reads your Gmail and scrapes your purchases".

It also was #1 on the front page of HN. Now it's gone.

What happened? Conspiracy theories welcome :-)

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#107

Post by onion2k »

beaner wrote: post #64
onion2k wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all they're doing is presenting your data in a better way then it's great. However, it's very likely that they're also selling adverts based on that data, and possibly selling the data itself. Do you really want your health insurance provider to be able to buy a list of restaurant bookings you've made? Or how about the airline you're about to book with knowing what you paid a competitor last time so they don't nee…

I think this comment is a great example of why I think most of the privacy concerns, especially around Google these days, are mostly overblown. I am not afraid of that example happening because that is not how Google operates. Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox. The advertiser has…

Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox.

This implies that two people who search "xbox" will see the same advert. That is absolutely not the case. Advertisers can target specific groups. Just log in to AdSense and you can easily see the options. They're not a secret.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#108

Post by r00fus »

saagarjha wrote: post #98
smallnamespace wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To build offline, Google would still need access to (some subset) of data at some point to train the models / write the heuristics.

Sure, but why does it have to be my data? Can't they do it on data they already have, or maybe as their employees to run it (who presumably have much more control over how the data is actually used)?

Exactly. Google is saying they "need the cloud" to make the prediction/action. They also require as grist for their mill: my data.

I would much prefer some basic heuristics executed on-device using my data in a secured processing state. The hueristic-building could be in the cloud, but on datasets other than mine, and let me tweak those dials!

Hell, I'd even pay for this feature.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#109

Post by mcintyre1994 »

fitzroy wrote: post #19

I've always assumed they do this since they've recognized and surfaced flight and event information for years. I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable. Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you p…

I wonder if they could build a service to help people switch to the cheapest options, through affiliates obviously. I've heard that's the long term business model of challenger banks which see your bills, but Google have that data too if you get bills emailed and are probably better positioned to build it if they wanted to.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#110

Post by beaner »

onion2k wrote: post #107
beaner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this comment is a great example of why I think most of the privacy concerns, especially around Google these days, are mostly overblown. I am not afraid of that example happening because that is not how Google operates. Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox. The advertiser has…

Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox. This implies that two people who search "xbox" will see the same advert. That is absolutely not the case. Advertisers can target specific groups. Just log in to AdSense and you can easily see the options. They're not a secret.

But this is still in line with my expectations. The advertiser knows someone matching a profile sees the ad. They don't know that person is me.
Post reply on HN