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Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google (wsj.com)
Facebook may be in the hot seat right now for its collection of personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, but as The Wall Street Journal points out, "Google is a far bigger threat by many measures: the volume of information it gathers, the reach of its tracking and the time people spend on its sites and apps." From the report (alternative source): It's likely that Google has shadow profiles (data the company gathers on people without accounts) on as at least as many people as Facebook does, says Chandler Givens, CEO of TrackOff, which develops software to fight identity theft. Google allows everyone, whether they have a Google account or not, to opt out of its ad targeting, though, like Facebook, it continues to gather your data. Google Analytics is far and away the web's most dominant analytics platform. Used on the sites of about half of the biggest companies in the U.S., it has a total reach of 30 million to 50 million sites. Google Analytics tracks you whether or not you are logged in. Meanwhile, the billion-plus people who have Google accounts are tracked in even more ways. In 2016, Google changed its terms of service, allowing it to merge its massive trove of tracking and advertising data with the personally identifiable information from our Google accounts.
Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we've installed, demographics like age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we've shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn't use information from "sensitive categories" such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Because it relies on cross-device tracking, it can spot logged-in users no matter which device they're on. Google fuels even more data harvesting through its dominant ad marketplaces. There are up to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S., and collectively they know everything about us we might otherwise prefer they didn't -- whether we're pregnant, divorced or trying to lose weight. Google works with some of these brokers directly but the company says it vets them to prevent targeting based on sensitive information. Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world's two billion active Android mobile devices.
Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we've installed, demographics like age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we've shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn't use information from "sensitive categories" such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Because it relies on cross-device tracking, it can spot logged-in users no matter which device they're on. Google fuels even more data harvesting through its dominant ad marketplaces. There are up to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S., and collectively they know everything about us we might otherwise prefer they didn't -- whether we're pregnant, divorced or trying to lose weight. Google works with some of these brokers directly but the company says it vets them to prevent targeting based on sensitive information. Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world's two billion active Android mobile devices.
By European standards, MS is a criminal enterprise at this time because of this. Unfortunately, data protection is still not taken seriously here and the respective laws are not enforced or it takes forever. My personal plan is to have a Win10 box (when I cannot avoid it anymore) used for nothing but gaming and gaming-related surfing and put everything else on a Linux machine, including an aggressively firewalled Win10 VM for MS office use (cannot get rid of that because customers).
It is a sad state of affairs where you have to regard major software vendors as the enemy. Kind of a tech version of fascism.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Neither did FB.
It's a mirror of a lot of things in life.... some people see the problems before they happen, other's don't until it happens to them, some never do because they prefer to live in a fantasy land.
It also basically mirrors the problem of corruption. I mean, forget democracy or religion or any of the other things... the one thing which is most scary for the potential downfall of civilisation is I think, the level of corruption. And I don't mean to imply that a country like, say, USA is more corrupt than a notoriously corrupt country like [insert choice here], but whatever field of human endeavour, be it science or insurance or medicine or dog shows, the human mind seems to have a really hard time acting honestly and free of corruption. And as IQs have gone up, apparently, so has people's ability to hide, and implement, corruption. And who can say they would not act the same if hired by some big company and given opportunity to gain power? Maybe we should be teaching integrity in like, early school, but where would you find the individuals with the integrity to set the example?
Your ISP (Interwebs Service Provider) has even more Personally Identifiable Information (PII) than either Facebook or Google combined. More even then the CIA, NSA & FBI.
Think about it: every single bit you send over the InterWebs goes through their routers over their wires, even if you use a satellite provider.
Who better than the 21st century TelCo's to trust w/ you most intimate on-line details? AT&T, Comcast, Frontier, Verizon, et al. all have spotless, impeccable records when it comes to respecting your privacy and guarding against data breaches.
NOT!
At least Google claims to strip the low-order octet (last 4 bits) from your 32-bit IP address when recording PII. That means they may know what ISP you're using and roughly in what town/county, but no finer resolution than that in their aggregate user data. Facebook makes no such claim, as far as I know. And your ISP records & retains full IP-address details in their logs for up to 2 years (or more), even if you're using VPN or Tor or some other presumed “privacy protection” device.
That's why unless you're using local strong encryption of all your data & Interwebs traffic, you're a privacy chump. Even then, though, that protects only your data, not your meta-data of with whom you've communicated, when and how many packets, etc. Big Brother likes it that way.
So why hasn't anyone dragged the ISP's before a Congressional hearing on data privacy yet? In who's pockets are they really... uhm... in? Just askin'. ;-)
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Used to be when you paid for the OS, that was it.
Well, haven't 'paid for an OS' since 1996. Why pay for a worse alternative?
Google analytics? Oh, one of those things my adblocker^H^H bandwith optimizer disables?
Don't worry too much - we have so many ways to fight back.
I'd say first of all, the general public doesn't really give a shit about data collection, because they don't understand what data collection is capable of. People ignored facebooks nonsense for a decade more or less, until it became a major news story of how one group used that data. People still don't understand the possibility that similar levels of mass population manipulation could be happening every day. If you ask me based on what I've seen of the companies. Microsoft is scary because they with regards to big data, seem to be the most happy to comply with the US government. Usually being the first and most excited to sign their names onto every pro surveylance bills etc... While google and facebook seem to generally seem to be in favor of making the government work, get warrents etc... to look at the data, MS seems almost to want the government to design a backdoor and collect whatever it wants whenever it wants of their data. Facebook is scary because they seem to be the least careful with their data, If someone is willing to pay for it, they are happy to unload it, and they seem to be somewhat sloppy with protecting the information, hence the Campbridge Analytica thing. Google, seems far more of a "horde whatever it might need". They have an epic boatload of information, possibly more than most of the others put together, they however intend to use that information for their own purposes, They will guard it as best they can... but of course their own intentions are a bit harder to read.