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Google – My Activity

myactivity.google.com

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Re: Google – My Activity

#31

Post by britch »

bosie wrote: post #16
echeese wrote: post #8

Well, the upside is that this is still empty after I disabled everything last time this was posted.

Can you please share how to disable the tracking of the activities? Just pause everything? Have you noticed a decay in the quality of your search results?

I've had everything paused but device info and youtube history for a few months now.

I have not noticed any significant change in the quality of search results. Though I primarily use DuckDuckGo I have to fall back on Google every now and again (or use Google to get different results).

Google is still better at inferring what I mean in a search than DuckDuckGo. Google seems to take into account current events, my location, and pop culture better than DuckDuckGo. I have not noticed any effect from changing my privacy permissions.

Re: Google – My Activity

#33

Post by aylmao »

This goes deep. I see not only when I have used Instagram, but it knows which instagram profiles and direct messages I opened.

I'm using Android at the moment, of course.

Re: Google – My Activity

#34

Post by jeromegv »

echeese wrote: post #8

Well, the upside is that this is still empty after I disabled everything last time this was posted.

I had everything disabled but I was forced to enable it to use my Google Home properly. Somehow the SpotifyGoogle Home integration didn't work unless I turned on web activity. Makes no sense.

Re: Google – My Activity

#35

Post by Bluestrike2 »

O_H_E wrote: post #20
sajithdilshan wrote: post #3

Jesus fucking christ. This is scary. They can build a full profile of me with all this data.

> They can build a full profile of me with all this data. They pretty much do

I think that part is generally out of mind for most users; what's so surprising when you look at the My Activity page is seeing many of the details that make up those profiles laid out in one place. It appears more...real, even without seeing the insights they're pulling from it.

Re: Google – My Activity

#36

Post by Grazester »

sgjohnson wrote: post #28
glerk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you enjoy your free email account, free maps, free YouTube and free search?

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.

Re: Google – My Activity

#37

Post by stedaniels »

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.

Is this a US only thing? Mine is empty.. UK/Gsuite

Re: Google – My Activity

#39

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

jeromegv wrote: post #30
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I fully understand the objection here. The purchase list is a view over your email. They have the email, and they have the code to construct the purchase from the email. What possible additional security would there be in deleting the derived object if they still have the source material and the means to reconstruct the derived object? If you don't trust them to handle the derived object according to you…

We should be allowed to keep our past emails without having them build a purchase object of everything we have ever bought.

Why does it matter, though? They claim the list is there purely for your own personal consumption. If that's true, and you don't care to use it, it costs you nothing that it exists. If that's false, then it doesn't matter whether you can delete it or not, because if they're willing to lie about its uses, they would also be willing to lie about whether they deleted it.

Re: Google – My Activity

#40

Post by mtgx »

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.

If Google isn't providing a way to stop that sort of data collection in the EU, then it's a clear violation of GDPR.
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