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.

Comments

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try your cell company...

Re:Seriously?

[Waffle Iron]

Try your cell company...

That's why anyone who outsources their cell production to a 3rd party is a fool.

I'm going to keep making cells for myself the old fashioned way: by mitosis.

Facebook/Google or...MS?

[grasshoppa]

I've been kinda confused that everyone is so angry at Facebook, while MS has been given a free pass.

Google makes sense to me; they've always been known to profile you so as to effectively sell you stuff. Free service, so you had to have known what was going on ( same goes for facebook mind you ).

But MS; they force 10 down everyone's throats with telemetry and who knows what other data being collected. Of the three, MS's data collection policies are the most opaque; you can't even find out what they know about you. And that's for a product they charge people for!

Yet no one seems to care. I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that outrage at Facebook is nothing more than an extension of (D)s throwing a fit because Trump got elected.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[meglon]

Facebook, Google, MS... all three of these actually preform some kind of service for the data. The other beasts... the ones who offer no services but simple collect and peddle data are even worse. Acxiom, Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, Palantir, PeekYou, Rapleaf, and Recorded Future; these companies business is to collect and sell it data, and they've been around a long time.

People have been complaining for a long time about these groups, but i think this new wave of anger is because the masses are finally figuring out what only the few have known: data is power, and when it's abused, everything gets fucked quick. It's not a D or R thing, it's the fact that a lot more people are witnessing how things get fucked when they shouldn't.

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.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[whoever57]

I am not so worried abut Facebook and Google holding data on me.

I am worried about companies getting access to the data collected by Facebook and Google. For example: Cambridge Analytica.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you have a choice about using MS. And they don't collect the same kinds of personal data as FB and G. (Yeah yeah, I know, "telemetry" blah blah. But seriously, they're not collecting anything like the same sort or volume of data as the big boys in this story.)

What Google does right is - sure, they collect the data, but they don't share it - with anyone. They use it to sling ads themselves. To give someone else direct access to it would be like giving away their golden goose. So Google puts very, very well defined limits around what information advertisers can gather from them. Whereas Facebook, from what I can see, just - sells the whole shooting match.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[gweihir]

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.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Yet no one seems to care. I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that outrage at Facebook is nothing more than an extension of (D)s throwing a fit because Trump got elected.

Facebook got CAUGHT selling your data to others. MS haven't as yet.

You didn't really put much effort into your inescapable conclusion did you?

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is the reason why you should be worried about Facebook and Google holding the data in the first place.

Re: Facebook/Google or...MS?

[phantomfive]

Used to be when you paid for the OS, that was it. Now they want you to pay for the OS....And also endure advertising. In the past, I always kept a windows system around just in case. Now they have been ejected with prejudice. Microsoft has no reason to be taking data that would let them show ads.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[Bongo]

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?

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[TheRaven64]

By European standards, MS is a criminal enterprise at this time because of this.

Why? Microsoft collects debugging information via Telemetry. They claim, and I have yet to see evidence to the contrary, that they use this solely for debugging problems with Windows and Windows software and do not share it with other parts of the organisation for use in profiling or targeted advertising. All of this is explicitly permitted by the GDPR.

In addition, if you host anything in Azure, you have the option of using a data centre that is owned by Deutsche Telecom and which Microsoft US has no access to, so you are also shielded from US law enforcement. They have also invested a lot in their Secure Cloud initiative, the prototype of which is available to select partners and uses Intel SGX to allow you to run code in Azure that Microsoft has no visibility into, even if they are running a malicious or compromised hypervisor.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[TheRaven64]

I think it's also to do with the fact that, even when Facebook wasn't selling data, they were taking so little care of it that third parties were able to exfiltrate it without any problems. Even if you trust Facebook and the companies that Facebook shares data with, do you trust all of the companies that are able to access Facebook data without permission because Facebook is so bad at security?

Re: Facebook/Google or...MS?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[Riceballsan]

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.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[thegarbz]

Which is the reason why you should be worried about Facebook and Google holding the data in the first place.

Not really. It's why you should worry about Facebook (a company which never quite figured out how to monetise data) or a company which has other products (and makes your data secondary revenue) holding on to your data.

For companies that exist solely by the virtue of having perfected the art of selling you to 3rd parties you're relatively safe. Google knows more about everyone than anyone, and like the famed CocaCola recipe is sharing none of it. Oh but we'll provide you with an API that allows adverts to be targeted directly at Anonymous Cowards, for a fee, exclusively via our platform, but we're not going to share who those Anonymous Cowards are or what we know about them.

I'm far more concerned about Microsoft than Google.

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[thegarbz]

By European standards, MS is a criminal enterprise at this time because of this.

Not at all. MS complies (bare minimum) with the EU rules but they do comply. A lot of people read more into the rules than what is actually in there, but the gist of things is you're free to collect stuff provided you tell people (they do during the setup), give people the option to find out what is collected (there's a KB on it), and protect the data (no real breaches known so far). The new rules that come into effect in May provide additional requirements such as the requirement to allow users to delete their data, so it should be no surprise the April update (formally the Spring update) provides this option squirrelled away in a menu. There are strict rules to the transfer of data which there is no evidence that MS is actually doing and rules on anonymising which apparently are already in place.

Care to share specifically what MS has done that makes them a criminal and exactly which rule they broke?

Re:Facebook/Google or...MS?

[thegarbz]

Rather than asking me to prove a negative how about stepping up to my challenge for you to prove the positive. Please why not show us exactly what MS is doing that is illegal and reference the law they are breaking in the process.

Whataboutism

[Zaelath]

This is even dumber that the average political use of whataboutism...

Google: knows everything about you, will use what it knows to serve ads to you based on a target profile supplied by the advertiser.
Facebook: knows everything about you and gave your data and your friends data and your friends-friends data to anyone that could be bothered to ask, oh and also sold some ads.

So similar.

Re:Whataboutism

[Zaelath]

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

There you go 14 years of it.

The "opt in" is bullshit. Facebook is very opt out, and the information it was giving app developers was friends and friends of friends information, that never even knew the app existed.

In Australia for example, around 50 people used the app, which harvested the data of over 300,000 people.

They may not have bundled the data and handed it to them personally, but they were at least wilfully negligent.

Re:Whataboutism

[rsmith-mac]

There's no whataboutism. Both of these companies suck.

If you care about your privacy - and especially if the recent Facebook news has inspired your interest - then you should be going through Google's services as well and minimizing the amount of data you supply them. Because they have plenty of data on you to use against your best interests, and a large analytics operation to figure out how to do it.

Both Facebook and Google have too much data. Period.

Whataboutism

[rsilvergun]

See here.

Google doesn't give away your data

[Tony Isaac]

Sure, Google collects all kinds of data about you. But it doesn't give or sell that data to third parties like app makers. It uses it to target ads. The ad companies don't get lists of your friends or your activities, to use how they want.

So yes, Google does collect a lot of information about you, but it's not the same as what Facebook does.

Re:Google doesn't give away your data

[rastos1]

Google was only not caught yet.

Re:Google doesn't give away your data

[Tony Isaac]

Facebook's data sharing has been an open "secret" for years. Their practices were widely known among developers, a fact that led to so many app developers gathering and misusing data. If Google had such secrets and were just waiting to be "caught," we technical people would already know.

Re:Google doesn't give away your data

[thegarbz]

Google was only not caught yet.

Quite the opposite. Google was "caught" offering a very sophisticated set of APIs that they have gone to great lengths to design and integrate into a service they exclusively offer so as to *not* sell your data. They have put a shitload of money and effort into ensuring that all analytics on the data is done themselves, contain it on their own data centres, and ensure that they only provide access to your eyes.

If you're waiting for them to get caught selling your data, I suggest you get a very comfortable chair. Or at least go do something else with your life and come back after hell freezes over and Cocacola starts selling their recipe to anyone who wants to make their drink at home.

Could someone please ...

[Qbertino]

... take Captain Obvious off the slashdot editor's board? This is slashdot, news for nerds, not The Daily Sun, news for idiots.

Thank you.

"I'll keep that between me and G"

[Mandrel]

I often say "I'll keep that between me and G".

Google, not God.

Re:"I'll keep that between me and G"

[avandesande]

Until government serves them with a subpoena...

Re:Threat

[TheRaven64]

Nonsense. Governments have historically been among the largest abusers of power for two reasons:

1. They have been the largest concentrations of power.
2. They have been the least accountable.

Do you honestly think that if you concentrate power in an unaccountable organisation it is less likely to abuse this power because said organisation doesn't call itself a government?

Take a look at the history of the British East India Company if you want to see what happens when companies have more power than governments. At least modern governments have structures that are intended to allow those over whom they have power to replace them periodically.

And you know who has more PII than either of them?

[IHTFISP]

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'. ;-)