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Dashboard Reveals What Google Knows About You

Posted by timothy on from the born-4th-nov-8lbs-20-inches-smart dept.

CWmike writes "Ever wonder exactly what Google knows about you? Google took a step today to answer that question with the unveiling of Google Dashboard, which is designed to let users see and control the copious amounts of data that Google has stored in its servers about them. 'Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data,' Google said in a blog post today. 'In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard.' Dashboard is set up so that users can control the personal settings in each Google product that they use. Google said the tool supports more than 20 products, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Google Latitude. Consumer Watchdog said in a statement today that it applauds Google for giving users a single place to go to manage their data. But at the same tine, the group also came down hard on Google, contending that it needs to give users a vehicle for stopping the company from collecting any personal data."

15 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Dashboard reveals what they want to by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Their dashboard simply reveals what they want you to know you keep.

    Love or hate Google it would be naive to think otherwise.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    1. Re:Dashboard reveals what they want to by pwilli · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Web History" is what you were looking for. It is available at the dashboard.

      It's the list of everything you searched through google when you were logged into your account, complete with dates. My backlog in there reached back to early 2007. Now I've deleted all entries and deactivated that "feature".

    2. Re:Dashboard reveals what they want to by pwilli · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, Google is and always will be a black box like any other company when it comes to storage of such data.

      But by deleting and disabling it I at least make sure that nobody besides Google can access that information, even if they somehow find out my password.

    3. Re:Dashboard reveals what they want to by Sam+Douglas · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, its real utility is seeing what is publicly accessible. I didn't realise my Youtube account was sharing my name (username), age and gender publicly.

    4. Re:Dashboard reveals what they want to by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And your ISP.. or anyone who has poisoned your DNS cache and is transparently proxying you.. or just about anyone who logs http-request traffic on the backbone.

      Oh, and anyone who has access to your web browser history/cache.. but you knew that.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. How to prevent companies from collecting data... by t33jster · · Score: 5, Funny

    the group also came down hard on Google, contending that it needs to give users a vehicle for stopping the company from collecting any personal data.

    1. I'm going to patent 'not using a company's products and services' in order to prevent them from collecting data.
    2. License my fantastic invention
    3. Profit!!

    --
    Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
  3. More like what Google THINKS it knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would say only about 5% of my Google searches are something that pertain to me. The rest are queries to answer questions others have asked, or nonsense searches triggered by external events - random words heard on the radio, items from junk mail my uncle sends, stuff from the newspaper.

    I clear my cache often, and often search for the equal and opposite of what I want to know about. Search for elder care, followed by kindergartens, then diabetes tests and discount candy bars.

    1. Re:More like what Google THINKS it knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      And from that I can tell you are an old diabetic pedophile looking for children, but health conscious about what candy bars you give to them.

  4. Let's add a link. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because it wasn't in the summary, https://www.google.com/dashboard/ is Google Dashboard.

    1. Re:Let's add a link. by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well that's annoying...one thing Google doesn't do intelligently is languages. I am logged into my account, they KNOW I speak English as a preferred language, but when I go to my iGoogle page on my iPhone whilst I'm in Belgium it insists on displaying everything in Dutch.

      That was annoying enough...but now the dashboard is doing the same, even when I visit the page from my laptop.

      Google, you KNOW I speak English, stop overriding my account setting for my language with demographic data based on my IP address. When I'm traveling it doesn't make me fluent in the local language...

      *slaps the company on the nose with a rolled up newspaper* Bad Google, bad bad portal!

      -- Pete.

      --
      Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
    2. Re:Let's add a link. by Nasarius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know, this is total bullshit. I've been living in Germany for about 1.5 years now, I use an English-language browser, I've set everything I possibly can in Google to English, and it still constantly gives me random pages in German, like the OpenID login. What the fuck? Let me set my language in one place and then *keep it*, or recognize that if my user agent is in English, I probably want English. Overriding such things based on geography is astoundingly stupid, given the large number of travelers and expats in the world.

      Belgium must be a particularly strange example...do the Walloons get Dutch too?

      --
      LOAD "SIG",8,1
  5. Re:How to prevent companies from collecting data by Slow+Smurf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about Google ads(or any other tracking mechanism), or when Google buys a company that you used to use instead of Google?

    It's not as simple as not using their products, unfortunately.

  6. Window dressing by rpp3po · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would have expected Slashdot to note the fact, that Google does not mention anywhere wether the presented data is even nearly complete. Without that it is just a sham, giving you the feeling of control, but possibly only touching the tip of the iceberg.

  7. How about a link to the dashboard? by seifried · · Score: 5, Informative

    3 links, not a single one to the actual dashboard.

    http://www.google.com/dashboard

  8. Solution by Teferison · · Score: 5, Informative

    Visit http://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirect) and google will no longer use your geolocation to determine what pages you want to see.
    Cookies required