Ask Slashdot: What Does Your Data Mean To Google? (google.com)

shanen writes: Due to the recent kerfuffles, I decided to try again to see what Google had on me. This time I succeeded and failed, in contrast to the previous pure failures. Yes, I did find Google's takeout website and downloaded all of "my data," but no, it means nothing to me. Here are a few sub-questions I couldn't answer:

1. Much more data than I ever created, so where did the rest come from?
2. How does the data relate to the characteristic vector that Google uses to characterize me?
3. What tools do Googlers use to make sense of the data?

Lots more questions, but those are the ones that are most bugging me right now. Question 2. is probably heaviest among them, since I've read that the vector has 700 dimensions... So do you have any answers? Or better questions? Or your own takeout experiences to share? Oh yeah, one more thing. Based on my own troubled experience with the download process, it is clear that Google doesn't really want us to download the so-called "our own" data. My Question 4. is now: "What is Google hiding about me from me?"

Comments

Re:In exchange for

[shanen]

Uh? What question are you trying to answer? And how does that question relate to any of the questions I posed? At first I thought you were trying to say something about derived data, but now I have no idea...

However, one of the categories of data I was looking for was data about me from other sources. For example, in terms of marketing my data to the advertisers, such external data as my credit history would seem to be highly relevant. Perhaps I can find my credit report somewhere in there?

In the original questions I left out one of the peculiarities I already discovered. A lot of "my" data that the google sent me was actually links to other places where I had posted things. In other cases the links seemed completely unrelated to me, as with a Google Play app to some game I don't believe I've ever downloaded or played.

That's an embedding vector

[Visarga]

The 700 dimensions vector (if it's true) is not something you can make sense of. It's an embedding vector that represents your characteristics in relation to all the other people. Each individual dimension doesn't have a meaning.

Re:That's an embedding vector

[shanen]

I think I agree with you as far as you went, but in that case part of the information I am asking about is the context to interpret the shape of the categorization space and where I am within it. That is also in terms of the relationships to the parts of my data that contributed to my location and to the accuracy of that location. The google can reveal a lot about the space without exposing any of the individuals within it.

Perhaps a more concrete example will help? For example, can the google look at the vectors of spouses to assess how well their marriages are liable to work? Just asking for a friend, since I'm pretty sure my wife would NOT let me look at her data. She'll barely tell me when breakfast is ready.

Re:That's an embedding vector

[shanen]

Me thinks you [Lanthanide] are projecting, but I will confess that I never did understand how my own parents stayed together. My condolences to your much better half. Or perhaps better to respond with some variation of the old grading joke: "I was one of the students who made the dean's list possible!"

That was just minor tit for even more minor tat. The most appropriate response would probably be to ask "Don't you have anything to say on any aspect of the actual topic at hand?" If you know nothing and have nothing to say, then you can always say nothing.

I actually did consider raising the issue of using personality characterization for marriage guidance and counseling. I would not be at all surprised to find out that some branch of the google is exploring related business opportunities. However my own interests these days are probably much more mundane. I'm just trying to figure out who's treading on my freedom.

By the way, I don't think the google is the worst abuser of our personal information. In a sense, the google's motives are pure insofar as they are focused on the money. Almost every question about what the google is doing with our information comes back to the answer "... because they think it will increase their profits."

Re:Et tu , Btute?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Does Google sell it outright?

The German postal service, Deutsche Post, was just caught selling data to political parties, which was used in election campaign targeting.

Deutsche Post responded with the claim that they were not selling the data . . . merely "renting it out" . . .

Mega giga lame.

Re:I got a ZIP file

[swillden]

This list is missing your tracked browsing history. For Android users there is GPS tracking history and call and SMS history.

If location history is turned on, it should be there in the download. Mine is.

SMS messages are not uploaded to Google, unless you're using Hangouts for SMS (which you can't do anymore unless you're using Project Fi as your carrier). Many people wish SMS were backed up, so that it could be restored onto a new device. As it is, when you get a new phone your SMS history is lost unless you copy it across to the new device (which recent Android versions will automate for you).

FWIW, Android P is enabling Android backups to be encrypted in a way that ensures that Google cannot read them. That will in turn enable more data (like SMS, I'd expect) to be backed up and restored since it won't raise privacy concerns.

Re:Where were the browser histories?

[swillden]

So far in my explorations of the data I haven't seen any browser history data, though I strongly suspect the google is collecting it

Unless you have web history enabled (check the settings in myactivity.google.com), I'm quite certain Google is not storing your browser history. I think this is a distinct question from tracking your web browsing through Google Analytics, assuming you haven't opted out of that. In the latter case, Google gets information about the sites you visit from those sites and uses it to update your interest profile, but doesn't store the actual visit history.

Note that there is almost certainly data Google has about you which it cannot show you, because it can't be 100% certain that you are you. Data derived from logged-out interactions can be tentatively correlated with you, but since there's no way to be completely certain you're the same person, it would be a violation of the privacy of whoever actually had that logged-out interaction (which might be you) to show it to you. In the case of logged-in interactions, of course, it's reasonable to presume that anything done while logged into account A can be safely shown to account A.