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Google – My Activity

myactivity.google.com

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Re: Google – My Activity

#191

Post by jodrellblank »

fallenatreus wrote: post #154

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…

So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to facebook comments to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown.

so many fcking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what?

All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save your searches on your terms.

Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app install on the gazillionth device I own.

Nobody is worried about this strawman.

Google has a copy of the same too? baby cry What am gonna do?*

Extrapolate this bit "google's anticompetitive behaviour" in your mind to the point where it affects you personally, then realise that it affects other people who aren't you, then legislate them hard before that happens.

Re: Google – My Activity

#192

Post by DominikPeters »

balaksakrionon wrote: post #128
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…

Fastmail is unfortunately very bad too now due to recent Australian legislation.

> As of December 2018, FastMail and all other Australian companies are subject to the Assistance and Access Bill, which compels them to assist law enforcement in accessing encrypted communications if warranted during an investigation. FastMail stated that while their services were not "materially affected" since they already complied with warrants per the Telecommunications Act, concerns have been shown by customers over the bill's effects, which has led to losses of business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastMail

Re: Google – My Activity

#193

Post by okmokmz »

edjrage wrote: post #93
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…

I have to say I'm almost more shocked at the number of "shocked" comments here than at the page itself. Not only because of what you mentioned, but also one would expect an audience like HN to know about this. Google has even nagged me with notifications to take a look at this page several times in the past. Also, for some weird reason (maybe because I'm using browser extensions?) my entries seem to come from the fut…

I would've agree with you in the past, but I think there are a number of reasons that there is always a huge amount of "surprise" when things like this are posted:

1. Ignorance is bliss: People don't WANT to know about this kind of thing. It can be upsetting, anxiety inducing, uncomfortable, dystopian, etc. so it "feels" a lot better not constantly thinking about and analyzing the ways in which your tracked

2. Assumptions: This may be tied to the previous point, but I think a lot of people make assumptions that these massively successful, and in their eyes beneficial, organizations wouldn't be collecting, analyzing, or using data in any kind of malicious or questionable ways if they even think about it at all

3. Dark patterns/misdirection/dishonesty: companies do everything in their power to make sure user aren't able to easily opt out, don't have a clear understanding of what is actually happening, and make it very difficult to find answers about it in a way the average user would understand

4. Technical knowledge: While there are lots of highly technically skilled users here, many of them specialize in something not related to this topic in any meaningful way. Our company has plenty of developers, for example, that can code at a substantially higher level than I am able, but otherwise their computer literacy is completely non existent. I'm no longer surprised when technical users seem to lack basic knowledge about a particular technology, because no one can specialize in everything

Re: Google – My Activity

#194

Post by jodrellblank »

tantalor wrote: post #10
amelius wrote: post #5

Totally irresponsible. What if another person (colleague, family member, friend, spouse) opens this on your computer? This should be opt-in, not opt-out!

Should browser history be opt-in, too?

Increasingly as I see things used to extract money from people, rather than build a better world, I wonder why not?

If a program defaults to writing in a hidden folder, probably what it's writing is not for my benefit.

If it's for my benefit, and I approve of it, it can go in /home/name/clear-folder or c:\users\name\documents\folder in an open and documented format with an open API.

If it's going in /home/name/.hidden/cache/dont-look or c:\users\name\appdata\company\{GUID} in an undocumented opaque blob without my knowledge, approval or explicit consent, it's much harder to argue that it's "for my benefit" and expect that I'd agree with that claim.

Turn everything opt-in and your computer reverts to being a disconnected 1990s less-useful computer.

Turn everything opt-out and your computer is increasingly tempting to be someone else's tool, a wringer for your life, a cash-extracting manipulation and abuse tool that does things you don't know about and didn't agree too, for other people's benefit. And we're not talking a defensible social good benefit like herd immunity to vaccines, either.

The real shock in these comments is not that "HN is amazed Google gathers this" or "HN is blazé about Google gathering this", it's "HN hasn't been able to log their own plain text search queries locally onto a NAS if they want to"

Re: Google – My Activity

#195

Post by sucrose »

balaksakrionon wrote: post #128
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…

Fastmail is unfortunately very bad too now due to recent Australian legislation.

I've been using MXRoute¹ for the past year and it's gone really well. I've never had a dropped e-mail. They use MailChannels² as a blacklist fallback. They're affordable, reliable, with quick support.

¹ https://mxroute.com/ ² https://mailchannels.com/

Re: Google – My Activity

#196

Post by zwaps »

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.

Also, you can not delete it. I deleted all mails in my Gmail, things still show.

Additionally, I can not even use the "download my data" options because it says "We can't verify it is you" and there is no way no authenticate myself.

So basically, Google really likes my data and holds it hostage.

Re: Google – My Activity

#197

Post by zwaps »

oldjokes wrote: post #158
Xunxi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

"Sensitive action blocked

Because you’re attempting a highly sensitive action, we need to be sure it’s really you. At the moment, we can’t. Try again from a device you normally use (like your phone or laptop) or from the location you usually sign in from.

Learn more about verifying it's you."

No other option. Everywhere I try is the same.

Giving an Evil company like Google my data. How could I have been so naive and foolish.

Re: Google – My Activity

#198

Post by fallenatreus »

jodrellblank wrote: post #191
fallenatreus wrote: post #154

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…

So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to facebook comments to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown. so many fcking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what? All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save your searches on your terms. Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app install on the gazillionth device I ow…

So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to Facebook comments to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown.

Not that I wanted to sound superior and compared comments to baby cry, just wanted to say that people are making a big fuss about something that is completely trivial.

All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save your searches on your terms.

No, I couldn't have done that until I discovered this post on hn today, even getting an idea to do that thing would have been chance encounter. Even if I was interested, seriously, are you suggesting I would have implemented a custom solution for all of the devices I ever used (since a decade) not to count different environments and oses they would operate on? My argument was in the spirit of converting a curse into a boon. Making good out of something supposedly bad.

Nobody is worried about this strawman.

If you really go through the arguments against this activity tracking, you would find even more such examples. It's not strawman, it's what actually bothering the people a lot (if you can go through rest of the comments)

Extrapolate this bit "google's anticompetitive behaviour" in your mind to the point where it affects you personally, then realise that it affects other people who aren't you, then legislate them hard before that happens.

Completely I do understand everybody's unique situation, my approach could have been malformed but the intention is not. Just trying to show people something positive out of negative.

And I rest my case.

Re: Google – My Activity

#199

Post by blub »

fallenatreus wrote: post #154

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…

You're right when you say that you are insignificant, but on the other hand no one really cares that Google has your data.

A lot of people care that they have the data of billions of people, because this gives Google immense power. And certainly not everyone in that data pile is insignificant.

Re: Google – My Activity

#200

Post by xvector »

fallenatreus wrote: post #154

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…

You make the same points as the "nothing to hide" people.

We get it. You don't care about privacy.

That doesn't mean we do not care about privacy.

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