Google – My Activity • Hacker News Board

Re: Google – My Activity

#151

Post by ryanobjc » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

kelp wrote: post #58

danShumway wrote: post #13

On this subject https://myaccount.google.com/purchases Turning off all of the controls under myactivity won't stop Google from scanning your emails to track any purchases you make. The only way to stop that is to switch off of Gmail.

This is what finally prompted me to move to Fastmail after being on G Suite since 2007. Even though I have to pay for Fastmail and was grandfathered into free on G Suite. Pretty happy with it so far. Now going through the process of reducing all the places I use Google services. Moved my personal stuff from GCP to Digital Ocean. Gmail to Fastmail. Chrome to Firefox / Safari. Currently seeing if Zoho is a good substit…

miss any flights yet?

I find this feature insanely useful. Google is doing something useful with my email. I learn about delayed flights way way in advance of anyone else as a result.

So let's just be clear here: - you get an email, to you, privately - gmail used to offer making a calendar for certain keywords in an email - google will now automatically do said calendar entries - on your PRIVATE calendar btw - google will also combine real-time flight info with your flight info, and tell you useful things via PRIVATE push notifications to you only.

This whole thing is the culmination of years of singularity "the computer will expand the mind" rhetoric. It's totally privacy protecting - the calendar entries, push notifications are private.

This is what everyone has been trying to build for years. We are here. And all of a sudden it's creepy? Because they notified you a dozen times, via email they were going to do this, and you ignored it?

Email has been turned into a useful automatically actionable system. My family forwards their itineraries and I don't have do anything else, it's automatically calendared. That's probably the only reason I pick them up from the airport frankly.

Re: Google – My Activity

#152

Post by javagram » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

docker_up wrote: post #55

The only real solution is to fill your history and your Gmail purchases with fake emails and fake clicks and fake purchases. If you add so much random data then there's no way Google can pick up anything useful. I think the other tactic to defeat Google is to click on EVERY SINGLE AD you see. It will destroy their ad tracking capabilities and it will also destroy their business since they won't be able to tell what i…

> Let me pay for my Gmail account. Let me pay for good support instead of automated decisions and getting kicked off the platform with no recourse.

https://gsuite.google.com/

Re: Google – My Activity

#153

Post by idlewords » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

angryasian wrote: post #118

For a supposedly tech related group, I'm more surprised that you guys are surprised on whats being tracked. Yes Google has the ability to track A LOT because of the severvices most people use, but don't most people have an abundance of tracking and user metrics across their own product. I know every company I've worked at does the same.

I run a product with no tracking, and it works fine. I suspect I am not the only person to make that choice.

Re: Google – My Activity

#154

Post by fallenatreus » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

This looks like fb comment page than a hacker news one.

So I just downloaded all of my search activity into nice JSON files, and now I am going to apply a bit of data science and magic stuff using Python and Node.JS and I will have a nice profile of myself for the past 11 years:

1) What kind of questions did I ask google? (beginning with how, when, where etc) - how do these questions connect to my personal and career development? 2) Apply some sentiment analysis using sentiment.js on the search terms and find out if the particular search term was positive, negative or neutral (this will give me a nice overview of my mood for each day I searched for the last one decade) 3) do some filtering and data massaging to pick out the exceptions (ok just a cursory look at the file helped me discovered a forgotten website project I did 10 years ago as part of college summer project - a work I am extremely proud of during that time and even now.) - which days, months, the year I searched the most (or what events triggered the searches - a breakup, a job search or a side project) 4) discover interesting patterns of my search profile (what I searched most during college time, after college when searching for a job, before marriage, after marriage etc.) 5) make a video on the lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU

so many fcking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what? Google has a copy of the same too? baby cry* What am gonna do? In a larger scheme of things, my data profile is just too insignificant.

To quote from the front page of Hacker News post, "The second volume of “My Struggle”, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s enormous, maddening, brilliant autobiographical novels, contains some depressing life advice. “If I have learned one thing,” he sighs, “it is the following: don’t believe you are anybody. Don’t bloody believe you are somebody…Do not believe that you’re anything special. Do not believe that you’re worth anything, because you aren’t.”

Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app install on the gazillionth device I own. More worried about google's anticompetitive behaviour (blocking youtube on edge chromium and more recently making jobs of ad blockers even difficult) and even more larger questions such as what if Google starts to non exists tomorrow? Life after Google?

Re: Google – My Activity

#155

Post by asdff » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

Grazester wrote: post #36

sgjohnson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlook/Proton. OpenStreetMaps. Vimeo/Dailymotion. DuckDuckGo. All free.

Vimeo/Dailymotion not a replacement for youtube when the things you are interested aren't posted there.

RSS and youtube-dl for your subs my man. ddg site:youtube.com for new content searches. Full youtube functionality without visiting the site.

Re: Google – My Activity

#156

Post by Andrex » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

msamwald wrote: post #146

losvedir wrote: post #84

I guess I'll be the lone voice chiming in that I find this pretty useful. There's been a number of times I've been like "oh, what's that song I asked Google to identify a month ago?" or "what was that page I managed to find last year by searching about [x]?" that I've been able to remember via this tool. Yeah, Google knows everything about me. C'est la vie. At least it's useful. What exactly is the threat model that…

What is actually shocking is that these data are made so easily accessible when you are logged into Google anywhere. There should be additional hurdles to view the entirety of a person's history with Google beyond merely being logged in. The potential for very easy and all-encompassing snooping (e.g. from friends and colleagues) is staggering!

If someone has access to this page (for your account), they have access to your Gmail, and likely have the ability to reset passwords and log in to any website you signed up for with that email address.

The solution, as always, is to secure your account.

Re: Google – My Activity

#157

Post by asdff » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #84

I guess I'll be the lone voice chiming in that I find this pretty useful. There's been a number of times I've been like "oh, what's that song I asked Google to identify a month ago?" or "what was that page I managed to find last year by searching about [x]?" that I've been able to remember via this tool. Yeah, Google knows everything about me. C'est la vie. At least it's useful. What exactly is the threat model that…

The fact that your personal activity log isn't in your hands at all. It's fine to collect this but google should be blind to whats in there. I agree, it is useful to go back and see what the hell you did, but I don't go around handing advertisers my diary for potential revenue streams either.

Re: Google – My Activity

#158

Post by oldjokes » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

Xunxi wrote: post #67

danShumway wrote: post #13

On this subject https://myaccount.google.com/purchases Turning off all of the controls under myactivity won't stop Google from scanning your emails to track any purchases you make. The only way to stop that is to switch off of Gmail.

This is quite troubling and enlightening to the point that I'll have to start redirecting my purchase receipts to a non gmail account. Are there any other 'hidden' urls to expose what other data Google is siphoning off our private transactions or conversations for that matter? I've had all controls under activity disable a long time and periodically check to make sure they stay that way. This one crosses the line! To…

You can download all your data and see what they have on you here. Be warned that this is an extremely upsetting experience for many people.

https://takeout.google.com/?pli=1

You can then delete your google account under "data & personalization".

I've been on proton mail for a few months now and am pretty happy with it, try it out!

Re: Google – My Activity

#159

Post by sbov » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

ryanobjc wrote: post #151

kelp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what finally prompted me to move to Fastmail after being on G Suite since 2007. Even though I have to pay for Fastmail and was grandfathered into free on G Suite. Pretty happy with it so far. Now going through the process of reducing all the places I use Google services. Moved my personal stuff from GCP to Digital Ocean. Gmail to Fastmail. Chrome to Firefox / Safari. Currently seeing if Zoho is a good substit…

miss any flights yet? I find this feature insanely useful. Google is doing something useful with my email. I learn about delayed flights way way in advance of anyone else as a result. So let's just be clear here: - you get an email, to you, privately - gmail used to offer making a calendar for certain keywords in an email - google will now automatically do said calendar entries - on your PRIVATE calendar btw - google…

Email misses most of my appointments. Doctors? Dentists? Picking a family member up at the airport? Your kids' karate classes? Playdates? Anything else arranged by text message?

Although maybe the problem is they don't know enough about my and my kids' life.

Re: Google – My Activity

#160

Post by GordonS » Thu, May 30, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

msamwald wrote: post #146

losvedir wrote: post #84

I guess I'll be the lone voice chiming in that I find this pretty useful. There's been a number of times I've been like "oh, what's that song I asked Google to identify a month ago?" or "what was that page I managed to find last year by searching about [x]?" that I've been able to remember via this tool. Yeah, Google knows everything about me. C'est la vie. At least it's useful. What exactly is the threat model that…

What is actually shocking is that these data are made so easily accessible when you are logged into Google anywhere. There should be additional hurdles to view the entirety of a person's history with Google beyond merely being logged in. The potential for very easy and all-encompassing snooping (e.g. from friends and colleagues) is staggering!

I actually find Google to be quite good here - if it detects something suspicious, such as login from a different browser or location, it will prompt you for another authentication factor, such as an SMS one-time code, or 2FA if you have it enabled.

I would add that if you haven't already enabled 2FA, you should.