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Google's My Activity Reveals How Much It Knows About You (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has released a new section to Google's account settings, called My Activity, which lets users review everything that Google has tracked about their online behavior -- search, YouTube, Chrome, Android, and every other Google service. Best of all, users can edit or delete their tracked behaviors. In addition, the My Activity tools come with new ad preferences. Google is now offering to use its behavioral information to tailer ads shown across the wider non-Google internet and Google's search pages, which until now was purely done through the use of cookies. The difference between Google and other companies that offer ads like Facebook is that Google is making this interest-based advertising extension optional, or opt-in, not opt-out. There are two separate behavioral advertising settings for users to switch on or off: signed in ads and signed out ads. Signed in ads are those on Google services, and signed out ads are those served by Google on third-party sites. However, if you're conscious about your privacy, you'll probably want to stay opted out.
The Google links in the summary are bad. Just go to https://myactivity.google.com/
If you believe that Google would willingly stop collecting any data about you on your request, well, you're more naive than I thought.
Remember that Google is subject to an FTC consent decree from the Buzz privacy investigation. As a result of that, they're regularly audited by the FTC, and if the FTC were to find that Google were not acting in accord with public privacy-related statements Google would be in big trouble. Even if the FTC's fine were trivial (which I don't think it would be), you can bet the EU would pile on a much bigger one. And the damage to Google's brand would be incredible.
Believe what you like, but the reality is that Google would have to be dumber than a box of rocks to lie. There's way too much at stake.
(Disclaimer/disclosure: I'm a Google employee, but I'm speaking only for myself.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If you really want privacy from Google you can get it but you have to do a bit of work for it. First you need to browse the Internet through an anonymizing proxy service. Second, you need to use script blocking, ad blocking and cookie management plugins in your browser. Third, you need to use anti browser fingerprint plugins to randomize your HTML canvas data, user agent, http-accept headers, etc. Finally, you need to avoid logging into Google services while you're operational and never from the same IP addresses that you use for non-routine activity or activities that you don't want associated with your known accounts.