He does not collect information for sale or, especially, in the interests of some universal conspiracy.
Everything is much more prosaic: personal information helps determine the tastes and habits of users. To do this, Google stores data about gender, age, interests, and search queries users, including voice ones.
For example, after analyzing the requests of an individual person, search engine will offer goods or services related to the object of previous requests. For example, if a user was looking for where to buy a smartphone, then contextual advertising will offer accessories for this phone model.
Another subject of controversy is the collection of information about the location of its clients by the “good corporation,” which forces especially nervous ones to constantly turn off the transmission of geodata.
Google collects data on the movement of users using their own smartphones: when using, for example, the service Google Maps the owner of the device gives away his location. The time during which a particular user was in a certain place, and even the speed of movement are recorded.
Thanks to this information, the search engine will return places that provide certain services closest to the user, again consistent with his interests.
Not everyone will like the fact that a huge transnational corporation has so much of their personal data. Of course, it is possible to disable some of the “tracking” services, but most are unlikely to give up, for example, watching videos on YouTube just so that Google does not recognize the user’s preferences.
One example of users outraged by the “violation of confidentiality” was Anton Burkov, who filed a lawsuit against Google because the corporation, in his opinion, read his personal correspondence. Burkov demanded 50 thousand rubles from the company. for moral damage. decided to recover the entire amount from the defendant, but Google's lawyers appealed the court's decision. As a result, the Moscow City Court rejected the company’s claim, obliging Google to pay 50 thousand rubles. However, the company can still appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
However, Google is far from the only company that accumulates the personal data of its customers.
Companies that “monitor” the users of their services also include , which recently came under a storm of criticism due to the huge amount of data collected latest version operating system from Microsoft - Windows 10.
How to approach the collection of data by organizations whose services are used by tens of millions of people every day is an open question. On the one hand, in the event of a software failure or hacking of data storages by hackers, the scale of the “drain” personal information will be simply catastrophic: the confidential data of millions of people will become public knowledge, and the corporation that allowed the leak will be overwhelmed with lawsuits from outraged users. Of course, every company does everything possible to prevent such incidents.
On the other hand, the collection of personal data reduces the quality of the services offered to new level. This practice allows the average user to “surf” the Internet with much greater comfort, helps to separate the “wheat from the chaff” and generally speeds up the search for information.
It is worth noting that the privacy policy of each corporation that collects certain data about its clients specifies all the information that the user allows to be stored when confirming the conditions; If such an agreement seems unacceptable, there is always the opportunity to reject the terms of use.
An example of unauthorized access to users’ personal information is the case of the social network Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg's company experimented with the emotional state of users
In 2014, the company conducted an experiment to influence people's emotional state by filtering positive and negative posts in the feed without notifying its users.
This incident had a negative impact on the image of the corporation itself: the company had to create an internal commission on ethical and legal issues of experiments, and also retrained personnel in this area.
In general, we can say that there is nothing in the collection of personal data that could harm the average user: for the most part, this process is carried out to improve the quality of the services provided. So it’s too early to talk about “Big Brother.”
Personal information security settings in Google services, slightly hidden from the user. Today I will tell you how to get to them. But first let's figure it out Why does Google monitor users? and how bad it is.
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Google and social networks analyze your behavior as a user on the Internet. The collected data is used to create a user profile and sold to advertisers, and the more detailed the profile, the higher the price they ask for it.
Consequently, the default privacy settings of these services tend to be designed to encourage the user to provide as much information about themselves as possible. Of course, it is possible to limit the data collected, but social services are not interested in their customers being able to easily discover and change such settings.
Therefore, especially for you, I found them on Google and am ready to tell you how to set up profiles in a few clicks to provide only the most necessary information about myself. It is also worth noting that if you absolutely do not want to share any personal data with these services at all, there is only one way left - to completely delete your account.
When registering with Google services, you sign a kind of agreement: free use in exchange for personal data. Therefore, you should not run into Google. Everyone is trying to make money as best they can. For free things you also have to pay something!
Protection from Google
How to protect yourself from Google surveillance?
Protection from Google is not entirely a mandatory measure. Every network user should not resort to it. But for those who have something to hide, I would advise them to still apply the methods outlined in this article to protect personal information.
Privacy at Google
After you have entered your account, Google begins to constantly monitor your web surfing even as you use third party services. Therefore, before logging into your account, uncheck the Stay logged in.
To open your account and privacy settings, log into your account, click your profile picture in the top right corner, and then select Account.
Google Personal Account
On the account settings page, scroll down to the “Tools” section. First line - Personal account, where you can see all the services you use and an overview of your activity for each of them, which Google stores. By clicking on the links, you will open the settings of the corresponding service.
How to prevent data collection
Google remembers not only search queries and online behavior, but also the places you visit (due to the continuous operation of geolocation services), contacts and calendar entries stored on your Android smartphone, searching and watching videos on YouTube. However, this can be prevented. Scroll down the account settings page to the Tools section and select the History line there. By moving the sliders to Disable in each of the six categories, you will prevent Google from storing that data in the future. Link History management leads to the page with detailed information, where you can delete individual existing records.
Recently, Google introduced a feature with which a user can view all his actions in Google services and disable the collection of information.
How to delete a Google+ profile
When you register with Google, a profile is automatically created in social network Google+. It is possible to remove it. Without leaving the History section, scroll all the way down to the item Similar settings. Click on the Google+ button to edit your settings. Scroll the page from Google settings+ all the way down and click on the link under the subheading Disable Google+. After entering your login information, you can delete your Google+ profile.
Account access
In addition to Google, numerous applications also have access to your data, including even those that you deleted a long time ago. To revoke access rights to programs, return to the account settings page and in the section Related apps and services click Account access. Select unnecessary program and in the column on the right click the button Deny access.
It is known that the American search engine collects information about users and their actions. But what exactly does Google know about you? How to delete information about yourself and your actions from the Google server? Information in our article.
What Google Knows About You
To analyze the collected data you need to go to this address. According to Google, this information is available only to the account holder, which is indicated on the website.
For mobile phone On Android, the list of recorded user actions is impressive. Everything is taken into account: from watching videos on YouTube to opening applications.
Open More Google Actions and select Location History (manage history hyperlink).
All your movements around the world over the past few years are collected here.
How to delete Google user statistics
From the menu on the left, select Select a deletion option.
Select the period and criteria for selecting the actions to be deleted and click the Delete button.
How dangerous is Google surveillance?
It is clear that when using the services of any company, you trust it to collect certain data about yourself. If you want to prevent the pages you visit from being recorded, use secure browsers or Incognito mode. You can additionally disable the collection of movement information on your phone.
It’s worth looking at what the American service knows about you to understand the importance of ensuring the security of your account. If you have a simple password, change it to a more complex one. Be more responsible about your safety. But if anything happens, we now know where to erase all the accumulated information.
The practical benefit of such surveillance is the ability to control your child’s account if there is access to it. You can see what videos he watches, what sites he goes to. At the same time, there is no serious violation of the privacy of correspondence. Google will record that you used the VKontakte application, but will not be able to read the messages.
Alphabet Inc, through Google services, eavesdrops on and records conversations and personal information about online activities. Each user can still delete information about themselves collected by Google, YouTube and other applications.
And it’s not even about what you talk about on the phone: your smartphone is watching you even when it’s just lying next to you on the table.
So if you've been using smartphones for a long time, you can listen to your conversations that Google has been collecting for years.
The company, in fact, does not hide this. But you can only find out about this fact if you read the huge multi-page “user agreement”. Of course, no one does this!
Why Google?
The company gives all the information it collects about you to its artificial intelligence. It learns to understand you, adapts to you and, theoretically, makes Google products more convenient for you.
Looks like it sounds cool. But there are three "buts"
Here are the addresses you need
All data recorded by your phone's microphone is stored. If there's nothing here yet, it means you just haven't used it. voice assistant, i.e. never said, “OK, Google.”
And here is the complete dossier that Google services have collected on you, based on what you do on the Internet.
Among other things, there is information about where and when you were (more precisely, your phone); everything you were looking for on the Internet; all the pages you downloaded.
But the most useful feature This service allows you to quickly delete everything from there. You can select the entries you want to delete with a checkbox, or you can delete everything at once - in one fell swoop. Click on the “Select Uninstall Options” button in the left column.
