and yet most ads I see on the internet are almost less targeted then tv ads. what are they doing with all this data i wonder. to be fair though i dont even know myself what i might be interested in.
The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
131–140 of 189 posts
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time you load a web page they can see your IP address, and IP addresses can be mapped back to rough locations. Sometimes people use "GPS" to also include things like your phone figuring out where it is based on what WiFi names it can see, but I don't think I've ever seen it for IP-based geolocation. (Disclaimer: I'm an engineer at Google)
Stop communicating silently with your servers. Do it. Ask for each and every call to them unless the communication is already confirmed by users. Make all http* communication go trough http proxy which logs all the traffic in clearly visible form and only than make https. Show the data sent, make google play and framework open source. Enable users to see your hidden syncs (oh yeah those with asterisks infront (you DO…
The complaint above was about login screens "knowing" about people's locations.
When you log in to a service (eg. Google), the device doesn't "silently" communicate with the servers, you asked it to. It sends a request with credentials, as it should. That request naturally comes with an IP address, which can be mapped to a rough location with no further information by the client.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but not through GPS, or the location information compiled about my logins would be way more accurate than it is (often off by 100-200 km in any direction). Probably IP based geo location (that would naturally trigger with VPNs that give you an IP in $whereever). That has nothing to do with the GPS setting of your phone.
I don't think anyone mentioned anything about GPS until now. We're talking about Google recording your location, which can be inferred from a number of sources, including GPS, WiPS/WFPS, IP, and others. WiPS/WFPS is the most commonly used by Google.
The great-grand-poster:
"Android even lets you turn off AGPS, which collects anonymous location data to update itself. As far as I know, this is not even possible on iOS."
AGPS is GPS, assisted but still GPS.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#134I think Google is a lot less creepy than Facebook. Yes, they vacuum a lot of data, but I do get directly related benefits from it, as well as controls that I trust. Example: Location history. It is turned off by default. I chose to turn it on, so I can know places I’ve been to previously (if I forget the name). It’s like a journal that writes itself. Google has its privacy issues, but on a whole I voluntarily choose…
That is misplaced. Android for instance is intentionally designed to leak like a sieve. The permission system is convoluted and designed to confuse lay users.
Google search itself creepily insists on telling you your location on every search when it has nothing to do with it and is completely irrelevant.
In this way it constantly seeks to legitimize creepy behavior and has gone all out to make stalking and hoovering up data look as if it is ok and harmless.
Combine Google's massive access to data across properties and their creepy behavior and the results are far more sinister.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. When you enter someone else’s place of business, you have no expectation of privacy. That's not true at all. When I go to the hardware store to buy a box of nails, I don't have any expectation for the owner to begin following me around for the rest of the day (and in perpetuity thereafter). I also don't expect the hardware store owner to get on the phone with the grocery store owner and ask him what groceries a…
I don't think either of these analogies is accurate? It's more like Home Depot slapping a GPS tracker on my person, which I am take with me when I leave the store, isn't it?
Does HomeDepot.com get to see where else you go on the Internet because they have tracking code on their site? No, they do not. They cannot obtain this data from the major tracking vendors (Facebook, Google etc.) either. Granted, the vendors themselves can often see cross-site behavior, but the individual sites using these trackers cannot and aren't given access to this information.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#13644 blocked scripts loading the article - nearly half of which was tracking related. Surely the irony of that isn't lost on people? Google's ability to track users is 99% entirely due to companies like the WSJ using them for tracking users. These companies are just as much to blame, if not more, than Google itself. E: What I mean by that is Google provides the means, but Google couldn't track nearly half of all sites…
> These companies are just as much to blame, if not more, than Google itself.
However, exact same thing applies for Facebook and all the likes. If a website is entirely self-contained, nobody other than your ISP or your browser/OS may track you over there as you directly type its name out to the address bar.
If Facebook is to blame more than the websites putting their like button on their websites, then so is Google.
On top of this, many people use Google as a gateway to the Internet. Even for the websites that they are pretty sure about their domain names, people rather search for it on the google.com, and follow the link from there. This allows Google to track them, even when they do not use Chrome. Yet, many even do use Chrome, very likely tracking you even when you do not visit a website through google.com.
So Google isn't even dependent so much on the other websites using their analytics, definitely not as much as you state with:
> Google's ability to track users is 99% entirely due to companies like [...]
It would be interesting to know the breakdown of contributions of Analytics, google.com, Chrome, etc. to Google's tracking capabilities.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like saying that because windows are transparent, it is ok to stare into people's living rooms. It's not - irrespective of transparency or lack of curtains. Nope. When you enter someone else’s place of business, you have no expectation of privacy. These websites belong to private entities. So it’s more like saying that because you voluntarily walked into my store, it’s ok for me to observe your behavior while yo…
Your opinion is not a "nope". It's your opinion. Others differ. For example, stalking is illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking#Laws_on_harassment_an... as is wiretapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Two-p...
You're right that both of those things are illegal. However, neither one has anything to do with this discussion. It isn't my opinion that a tracking cookie is no way equivalent to peering into someone's window in their home. It's a fact based on knowledge about how each activity works.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#13844 blocked scripts loading the article - nearly half of which was tracking related. Surely the irony of that isn't lost on people? Google's ability to track users is 99% entirely due to companies like the WSJ using them for tracking users. These companies are just as much to blame, if not more, than Google itself. E: What I mean by that is Google provides the means, but Google couldn't track nearly half of all sites…
The whole tracking thing should be outlawed in my opinion. It's like saying that because windows are transparent, it is ok to stare into people's living rooms. It's not - irrespective of transparency or lack of curtains. In a world where that is clearly not ok, then why is it that this kind of thing (tracking) is deemed ok? What we need is something that does to our online privacy, what curtains did for peoples real…
I disagree here pretty strongly, because although I hate tracking, there are perfectly fine technical solutions.
Tracking on websites works like this:
* the site sends your computer content and code
* your computer runs the code, which causes it to send data about you to a whole bunch of third parties
* meanwhile, your computer displays the content to you
All you have to do is decide not to do step 2. It's your computer, it's under your control.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting that reading the newspaper at home grants the publisher the right to peer in through my window? No, nor did I even intimate that. That's your property, not mine. That suggestion is as ridiculous as the one I was trying to refute. But when you enter my property - be it virtual or phyiscal - expect to be observed using whatever technologies and vendors I want that are legal (with a few obvious legal…
People that want to move this discussion forward need to stop using analogies for things in the physical world, because the interactions between a website and a browser aren't similar enough to anything physical. Every single time someone resorts to analogy in one of these threads, it immediately and permanently devolves into an argument over the details of the analogy. Browsers run code delivered by websites. It's g…
>Extensive tracking scripts are now falling into the same category as crypto miners and malware.
That's definitely your opinion, and it is one that is not widely held. How do I know this? Because Facebook's usage - despite a deluge of recent headlines headlines that vastly overstated their privacy issues and made it the poster child for extensive tracking technologies - hasn't gone down. So, roughly 2 billion of the world's Internet users disagree with you.
Re: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data
#14044 blocked scripts loading the article - nearly half of which was tracking related. Surely the irony of that isn't lost on people? Google's ability to track users is 99% entirely due to companies like the WSJ using them for tracking users. These companies are just as much to blame, if not more, than Google itself. E: What I mean by that is Google provides the means, but Google couldn't track nearly half of all sites…
> These companies are just as much to blame, if not more, than Google itself. However, exact same thing applies for Facebook and all the likes. If a website is entirely self-contained, nobody other than your ISP or your browser/OS may track you over there as you directly type its name out to the address bar. If Facebook is to blame more than the websites putting their like button on their websites, then so is Google.…
You make an excellent and fair point about the use of Chrome, as well asYoutube and other popular Google-owned products. That certainly makes it far less than my pulled-out-of-my-ass 99% claim. :)
It would be interesting to actually see the breakdown between Google's 1st party tracking (direct-from-Google) vs Google's 3rd party tracking (Tracking thanks to 3rd parties)
>If Facebook is to blame more than the websites putting their like button on their websites
I think the problem here is how Facebook sold the user data and/or used the data to target - as it allowed much more narrow demographic targeting than I think even Google provides. (I could be wrong on this, I've never actually USED either for ads - although I work for a company that does so I really should probably know this...)