
Google – My Activity - shawndumas
https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
======
losvedir
I guess I'll be the lone voice chiming in that I find this pretty useful.
There's been a number of times I've been like "oh, what's that song I asked
Google to identify a month ago?" or "what was that page I managed to find last
year by searching about [x]?" that I've been able to remember via this tool.

Yeah, Google knows everything about me. C'est la vie. At least it's useful.
What exactly is the threat model that everyone is operating under which
prompts all the comments here?

~~~
edjrage
I have to say I'm almost more shocked at the number of "shocked" comments here
than at the page itself. Not only because of what you mentioned, but also one
would expect an audience like HN to know about this. Google has even nagged me
with notifications to take a look at this page several times in the past.

Also, for some weird reason (maybe because I'm using browser extensions?) my
entries seem to come from the future:

[https://i.imgur.com/6TSiZIW.png](https://i.imgur.com/6TSiZIW.png)

~~~
okmokmz
I would've agree with you in the past, but I think there are a number of
reasons that there is always a huge amount of "surprise" when things like this
are posted:

1\. Ignorance is bliss: People don't WANT to know about this kind of thing. It
can be upsetting, anxiety inducing, uncomfortable, dystopian, etc. so it
"feels" a lot better not constantly thinking about and analyzing the ways in
which your tracked

2\. Assumptions: This may be tied to the previous point, but I think a lot of
people make assumptions that these massively successful, and in their eyes
beneficial, organizations wouldn't be collecting, analyzing, or using data in
any kind of malicious or questionable ways if they even think about it at all

3\. Dark patterns/misdirection/dishonesty: companies do everything in their
power to make sure user aren't able to easily opt out, don't have a clear
understanding of what is actually happening, and make it very difficult to
find answers about it in a way the average user would understand

4\. Technical knowledge: While there are lots of highly technically skilled
users here, many of them specialize in something not related to this topic in
any meaningful way. Our company has plenty of developers, for example, that
can code at a substantially higher level than I am able, but otherwise their
computer literacy is completely non existent. I'm no longer surprised when
technical users seem to lack basic knowledge about a particular technology,
because no one can specialize in everything

~~~
fallenatreus
In the age of Google (what a paradox lol), at least people can borrow an
opinion if one is not available.

100% agreed with this statement: _I 'm no longer surprised when technical
users seem to lack basic knowledge about a particular technology because no
one can specialize in everything_

I read somewhere that there are lots of hubris & privileged self-ego stoking
happening in the IT industry (just look at the tough super technical interview
questions you need to answer in every IT job ever). But more than 50% of the
software developed or designed in the world is not good enough.

I still have to come across a strong argument that would really make me
worried about this kind of tracking done by Google.

------
danShumway
On this subject
[https://myaccount.google.com/purchases](https://myaccount.google.com/purchases)

Turning off all of the controls under myactivity won't stop Google from
scanning your emails to track any purchases you make. The only way to stop
that is to switch off of Gmail.

~~~
stedaniels
Is this a US only thing? Mine is empty.. UK/Gsuite

~~~
scrollaway
I think it's a GSuite configuration thing. Mine used to be empty (GSuite). Now
I'm checking it again, there's some stuff on it, although it's buggy.

~~~
tnorthcutt
Same here, gsuite used to be safe from this but mine shows purchases starting
this month. Not sure if it only shows the most recent month to everyone, or if
that's when they turned it on for gsuite users...

------
duxup
My new Pixel tracks songs that I've "listened to".

I saw a few odd ones that I had never heard of was sure I didn't listened to.

Until I realized ... it identified and logged songs in a movie my kids watched
on a rainy day recently.

~~~
j88439h84
Did they watch the movie on your phone, or was it using the mic?

~~~
duxup
Just picked it up by the Mic. It was a DVD they watched.

Apparently my phone just logs all the music it hears all the time and displays
it on the lock screen.

There is an option to tell it to not listen all the time.

------
UtahDave
I'm not the most tin foil hat kind of person. I don't mind some of the
tracking Google does as long as I know about it.

This url shocked me.

They apparently track every app I open and use on my Pixel phone. They had
individual entries for when I skip a song in Google Music. I feel physically
sick. I went through and deleted most of what I could and turned off tracking
where I could.

~~~
throwaway287391
I'm sorry, but ... are you (and others here with similar reactions) serious?
You don't think Google knows when you skip a song in Google Music? How do you
think recommendations work exactly? I thought this was HackerNews, not my
grandpa's Facebook feed.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
I feel like you have this idea that technically literate people are magically
immune from normal human foibles and think through the entire logical chain of
consequences for every abstract fact of which they are aware. We are not.

Understanding how Google Music works and knowing that Google tracks
information about you does not necessarily imply the very real understanding
that viewing pages like this provide. People generally don't logic that way,
us included.

------
jcwayne
Looks like they've removed the summary statistics in favor of a timeline.
Still, it's nice to have it all searchable in one place. It also provides a
nice place to check that I have all of the handy features turned on.

------
sajithdilshan
Jesus fucking christ. This is scary. They can build a full profile of me with
all this data.

~~~
glerk
Do you enjoy your free email account, free maps, free YouTube and free search?

~~~
sajithdilshan
My email (gmail) is bound with so many services (both online and offline) and
it is part of my online identity. It would be so much effort to change the
email now.

I don't think there is an alternative to google maps which is in the same
level as quality and richness in information. I would be totally lost without
google maps when I'm traveling to other countries, especially when it comes to
public transportation like tram, U-bahn and busses.

~~~
justusthane
I switched off of Gmail a couple years ago after almost a decade with Gmail,
in the same boat as you with my full online identity tied to it. Honestly, the
realization that my identity was so tied to it is why I switched - I didn't
want to lose my online identity at Google's whim.

The switch isn't as bad as you would think. It was pretty painless.

1\. Compile a list of all your online accounts - if you use a password
manager, you should already have this

2\. Create a new email account on a service you trust, preferably at your own
domain. That way, if you decide to switch providers later you can keep your
address. I used Fastmail, and I'll cast my vote for them. (I believe Fastmail
also has the ability to automatically import all your email from Gmail,
although I took advantage of the switch to start fresh. I just downloaded a
bulk archive of all my email).

3\. Set up a vacation responder on your gmail address explaining your switch.

4\. Change your email address on all your online accounts to your new address

5\. After a period of time to make sure people are using your new email
address, remove Gmail from your Google account. What's really cool about this
is you can easily switch your Google ID for your existing Google account to
your new email address, so you can continue to use any Google services as you
wish without having them in control of your email/online identity.

NOTE: Even after removing Gmail from your Google account, you remain in
control of that Gmail address - Google won't reassign it. You can reactivate
it at any time (for example, if there was an account you forgot to switch).
I've reactivated and re-deactivated mine several times.

It's really not bad, and _much_ more painless that losing access to your
Google account.

~~~
O_H_E
> you can easily switch your Google ID for your existing Google account to
> your new email address, so you can continue to use any Google services as
> you wish without having them in control of your email/online identity.

This is really interesting.

You mean I could change your `google account` email to a non-google domain
just like other internet services? Was not sure about what you meant by
"Google ID"

If that is true, I probably want to take advantage of this before they remove
it.

~~~
justusthane
Absolutely. I use my non-google email account as my login for Google.
Seamlessly works for everything. People can share Google Docs with me, etc.

------
angryasian
For a supposedly tech related group, I'm more surprised that you guys are
surprised on whats being tracked. Yes Google has the ability to track A LOT
because of the severvices most people use, but don't most people have an
abundance of tracking and user metrics across their own product. I know every
company I've worked at does the same.

~~~
JohnFen
> don't most people have an abundance of tracking and user metrics across
> their own product.

No product I've ever worked on does this.

But you're right, this is common -- and is why I have to block all outgoing
internet traffic by default now. Applications can no longer be trusted to be
well-behaved on this score.

------
wenderen
[https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)
is a similar tool that I've used to recall the name of places I've been to. In
particular, one really good taqueria in San Diego.

~~~
HNLurker2
Wow now this is scary. Even though I have my location closed they still track
me. The sad thing is most of my time is spent at school according to Google

------
echeese
Well, the upside is that this is still empty after I disabled everything last
time this was posted.

~~~
danShumway
Is
[https://myaccount.google.com/purchases](https://myaccount.google.com/purchases)
empty as well for you?

~~~
joosters
Mine finally is :)

I got a shock when I first saw that link on HN, it motivated me to finally
purge my email archives on gmail. The purchases didn't disappear immediately,
but they do seem to have finally gone now.

------
lawrencevillain
Pulled from the other thread, a way to delete all of your activity.

[https://myactivity.google.com/delete-
activity](https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity)

~~~
ceejayoz
I don't think you can delete purchases from there.

When I hit the "remove purchase" button, it even says "To remove this
purchase, delete the email."

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I'm not sure I fully understand the objection here. The purchase list is a
view over your email. They have the email, and they have the code to construct
the purchase from the email. What possible additional security would there be
in deleting the derived object if they still have the source material and the
means to reconstruct the derived object?

If you don't trust them to handle the derived object according to your
desires, then deleting it should not give you any assurances, since they could
just rebuild it from the source material and the code they have on hand.

I think what you're really looking for is a mechanism like, "don't use this
derived object in ways I find objectionable." I'm not sure exactly what that
would look like for you; it would probably be different for every individual.
For what it's worth, at least if you believe the news and Google's public
statements, it doesn't use the contents of your email for ad targeting.

~~~
jeromegv
We should be allowed to keep our past emails without having them build a
purchase object of everything we have ever bought.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Why does it matter, though? They claim the list is there purely for your own
personal consumption. If that's true, and you don't care to use it, it costs
you nothing that it exists. If that's false, then it doesn't matter whether
you can delete it or not, because if they're willing to lie about its uses,
they would also be willing to lie about whether they deleted it.

~~~
la_barba
> They claim the list is there purely for your own personal consumption

The problem is that they are constantly thinking along these lines, and
building products to enable this. Also, they are an advertising company, so
this is something that is of value to them. Fox guarding the hen-house stuff.

In my mind, its kind of like hiring an IP lawyer at a company. Even if your
company is not litigious, there is a chance that at some point the lawyer
initiates legal action to "prove their worth" or even advance their career
inside the company. Same thing with this, why is Google paying developers to
build this product if they're never going to use it? What is the business
justification? Its certainly not for PR or marketing reasons.

Having an apparatus ready to go is very different than having no apparatus.
This is part of the reason why weapon buildups are bad across the board even
if people claim "nobody" is going to use them.

~~~
joshuamorton
> In my mind, its kind of like hiring an IP lawyer at a company. Even if your
> company is not litigious, there is a chance that at some point the lawyer
> initiates legal action to "prove their worth" or even advance their career
> inside the company. Same thing with this, why is Google paying developers to
> build this product if they're never going to use it? What is the business
> justification? Its certainly not for PR or marketing reasons.

Useful features attract users. Users are a good thing. Like I can apply the
exact same argument to email labels:

Why does google let you _label_ emails? They're an advertising company, so
labels must be valuable to them. What is the business justification? It's
certainly not PR or marketing.

And now suddenly labels sound like an ominous feature, anti-user or anti-
privacy or something, maybe. Which they aren't. But the implication is there.

~~~
la_barba
>Useful features attract users. Users are a good thing.

I think its a bit of a stretch calling this feature useful but I suppose you
can re-define anything to be useful. Ads are useful too, because you can save
money by buying the exact thing that you need. Its too bad that people are
downloading ad-blockers by the millions.

Google snooping on emails and extracting purchase related information to stick
inside a dossier on you, is in no way the same as you voluntarily, creating a
label for an email which they have already scanned anyway. An advertising
company wants to know what you're buying, how frequently, and how much you
spend on things. That is like a goldmine for them. The labels, are almost
noise because its data that is an abstraction away from telling advertisers
what will get you to open your wallet - which is the end goal.

>Like I can apply the exact same argument to email labels:

I don't think you can, and I could not follow the argument you made.

~~~
joshuamorton
So I've rehashed this argument a lot recently: Google has to snoop on your
emails. Every email provider does. Spam classification, automatic
labelling/filtering, things like the "we think this is phishing" banners, etc.
all require some form of analysis. You could (and seem to be) calling some of
that "snooping", but some of it is acceptable. So the question is where is the
line drawn?

> I think its a bit of a stretch calling this feature useful but I suppose you
> can re-define anything to be useful.

It's used to alert you on upcoming packages you may receive or bills you need
to pay (if you have an android phone/google assistant). I think that's useful.

> The labels, are almost noise because its data that is an abstraction away
> from telling advertisers what will get you to open your wallet - which is
> the end goal.

Statements like this amaze me! You really think that manually curated labels
would be less useful than automated inference about an email? Supervised
learning is basically always easier than unsupervised, and email labels are,
quite literally, labels for the data. It's a model-maker's dream!

> I don't think you can, and I could not follow the argument you made.

That's because you personally find labels useful and non-invasive, but feel
that this other feature is not useful and is invasive. That's the only
difference. If you felt you got value from the purchase history tools, which
again, some people do, or if you didn't have an unfounded belief that everyone
was lying to you and this data was being used in ways it isn't, you wouldn't
find what is essentially automatic labelling of some emails invasive.

The argument is that labels are useful to some people. Google could misuse the
data derived from labels. Similarly, purchase history info is useful to some
people. Purchase history data could be misused by Google. If you trust Google
to not misused labels, then why don't you trust them to not misuse purchase
history? If you do trust them in both cases, this doesn't matter, and if you
don't trust them at all, why are you using an email client that you think is
completely lying about how they're using your data?

~~~
la_barba
>So I've rehashed this argument a lot recently: Google has to snoop on your
emails. Every email provider does. Spam classification, automatic
labelling/filtering, things like the "we think this is phishing" banners, etc.
all require some form of analysis. You could (and seem to be) calling some of
that "snooping", but some of it is acceptable. So the question is where is the
line drawn?

Its not about a line. Advertising functionality is simply not a core function
of an email service. It is something that is tolerated in exchange for a free
service. That is not the same as ceding control and letting a vendor do
anything they wish simply because a vendor claims its useful.

>It's used to alert you on upcoming packages you may receive or bills you need
to pay (if you have an android phone/google assistant). I think that's useful.

Well, how does storing the item purchased and the dollar amount and other
purchase details help with tracking anything? AFAIK Amazon for e.g. has
stopped putting in tracking information in their emails. There could be a
useful function as far as bills are concerned, but its weird to take an email
about a bill and then generate another wasteful notification about the same
bill. Or to take a package has shipped email and generate another
notification. But that is a separate discussion.

Also, if Android and google assistant users have chosen to enable such
features with informed consent, I don't see why every single gmail user has to
have this this enabled. I mean that in a rhetorical way, I do see why an
advertising company would do such a thing. Anyway, I'm simply registering a
protest and I encourage other users to do the same. Several invasive Google
policies were reversed due to privacy push-backs, and so all hope is not lost.

>The argument is that labels are useful to some people. Google could misuse
the data derived from labels. Similarly, purchase history info is useful to
some people. Purchase history data could be misused by Google. If you trust
Google to not misused labels, then why don't you trust them to not misuse
purchase history? If you do trust them in both cases, this doesn't matter, and
if you don't trust them at all, why are you using an email client that you
think is completely lying about how they're using your data?

That to me, is needlessly polarizing a nuanced issue. "Either you trust us
completely or you don't" is not really an argument worth having is it?

------
booleandilemma
Just gonna leave this here:

[https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/)

~~~
britch
I would love Maps and Gmail alternatives if anyone has them.

~~~
fghtr
> Gmail alternatives

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20005980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20005980)

> Maps

[https://openstreetmap.org](https://openstreetmap.org)

~~~
GRiMe2D
Note that OpenStreetMaps isn't about maps. It's about Open Data for Maps. So
technically you can use like maps but consider using apps or maps that use
OSM.

Great example is MapsMe for Android and iOS. Works offline. However, there are
ads in app and probably from Google

~~~
0xffff2
I used Maps.me for quite a while until they recently added ads. Anyone know of
an alternative for iOS that's ad-free? (I'm more than happy to make a one-time
purchase for an app that promises no ads now or ever.)

~~~
GRiMe2D
MapsMe is open source app. As far I know, when you compile yourself, ads are
disabled by default

[https://github.com/mapsme/omim](https://github.com/mapsme/omim)

~~~
0xffff2
If I compile it myself I have to pay Apple $100/year to actually load it on my
phone, correct?

~~~
GRiMe2D
No, you can compile it yourself using free apple developer account. However
there is a device count limits on free accounts - 3 devices can be "linked" to
the account. You have to pay if you want to remove old device.

You can compile and install unlimited number of apps to your device. But you
won't be able to send them over air (Ad-Hoc) nor send to Apple AppStore.
You'll need to locally install compiled app using Xcode (Xcode supports
installing and debugging over Wi-Fi, but first time usb connection needed)

Some additional info: \- Xcode can be downloaded directly without using Mac
App Store. But there's no "Downloads" section for free developer accounts.
Search for "Xcode direct link" and there would be stack overflow answer
listing all actual versions \- You'll need to setup Apple ID to enable
developer account. Existing Apple ID can be used as developer too. \- There
may be a lot of errors indicating provision/bundle id mismatch. You need to
use "Automatic Provisioning" from Xcode \- iOS Simulators won't count as
attached devices

------
abraham
Previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12896859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12896859)

------
kinkora
Arguments & discussions about google tracking you and how some products are
crippled if you disable it (looking at you Maps!!) aside, they at least
recently introduced a way for you to delete all the information here:

[https://myactivity.google.com/delete-
activity](https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity)

Not many people know about this so spread the word!

------
docker_up
The only real solution is to fill your history and your Gmail purchases with
fake emails and fake clicks and fake purchases. If you add so much random data
then there's no way Google can pick up anything useful.

I think the other tactic to defeat Google is to click on EVERY SINGLE AD you
see. It will destroy their ad tracking capabilities and it will also destroy
their business since they won't be able to tell what is a good click and what
isn't. I've started doing this and I don't think there's anything else that
can get them to stop actively violating our privacy.

Let me pay for my Gmail account. Let me pay for good support instead of
automated decisions and getting kicked off the platform with no recourse.
Otherwise I will render myself useless to your algorithms by changing my
behavior so that algorithms won't be able to make sense of it.

~~~
JohnFen
> The only real solution is to fill your history and your Gmail purchases with
> fake emails and fake clicks and fake purchases.

The only real solution is to delete your Google account(s), avoid using Google
services entirely, and firewall off any access from your machines to Google
servers.

~~~
docker_up
You can't escape Google. I think there's been several articles talking about
how deeply embedded they are.

~~~
IceWreck
You can. Its just that it requires more effort than most are willing to make

------
jharohit
while we are on that
subject..[https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

------
spidermango
Why do you guys care so much that google is tracking your purchases? They will
just that use your own habits to give you more personalized ads or
recommendations which is better than random ads not related to your own
habits. How does it hurt you as a consumer?

~~~
JohnFen
> They will just that use your own habits to give you more personalized ads or
> recommendations

That's one reason I care so much right there. I 100% don't want "personalized"
ads. But I don't for a minute believe that's the only thing they do with that
data.

More generally, it's simply none of their business unless I choose to share it
with them, and it makes me very angry that they don't have a basic level of
human respect about that. (To be clear, I don't single Google out on this -- I
have this objection to the entire internet advertising industry.)

I don't need to show any kind of imminent harm in order to object to that. I'd
also object to someone coming into my house and photographing everything in it
without my permission, even if they never did anything with the photographs.

~~~
spidermango
but why. Everyone just says they don't want personalized ads but why? Also its
not the same thing as someone coming into your house and photographing
everything at all, false equivalence.

~~~
JohnFen
I don't like personalized ads for three main reasons.

First, because personal ads are a strong indicator that my web usage is being
tracked.

Second, because nonpersonalized ads provide information to me about the site
they're appearing on -- they can act as a sort of quickie indicator about what
sort of audience the site is intended for. Peronalized ads eliminate this.

Third, because what little usefulness ads supply to me comes from serendipity.
Personalized ads eliminate this, too.

In exchange for removing what value ads may have brought me, personalized ads
give me exactly nothing in return.

> its not the same thing as someone coming into your house and photographing
> everything at all, false equivalence.

I think the comparison is apt when it comes to claims that spying on people is
OK as long as the spies aren't directly harming you. In both cases, someone is
recording your personal data, in both cases, they aren't harming you with it,
and in both cases it is extremely objectionable regardless.

------
dleslie
I don't like that it is logging what apps that I use on my phone.

------
jwr
This is great. Now I can see in a single place how YouTube mixes other
people's history with mine. It seems I watched "Funny Dinosaurs in Poop
Fight", "Poop Cartoon 04: Fried Sh*t" and "Pirate Pete's Potty: Potty Training
Video for Toddlers" yesterday. Fun.

(I've been getting some other kid's watched videos in my history, and Google
doesn't care about this kind of history mixing, my reports got me nowhere).

~~~
jwr
Replying in bulk: yes, I am sure it isn't from my device, and yes, I jumped
through all the hoops, including changing passwords, logging out all devices,
clearing histories, etc etc.

It is not my device. I am getting somebody else's history.

I also reported it to Google, providing additional details, late last year I
think. No change. And I have done everything I could, short of deleting the
Google account. So all I can do now is tell others.

The amusing thing is how whenever I mention it on HN, it gets immediately
downvoted. There sure are some hard Google fans here.

~~~
VikingCoder
When you reported to Google, are your reports public on a Google Groups or
something? Is there a bug you can link us to?

------
booleandilemma
How easy is it for a Google employee to access my activity?

~~~
lotu
Normally it is impossible. Normal logs have the user name and IP address
removed, they even do stuff to truncate URLs in case a website is hiding
usernames or passwords in the URL. If to perform your job it is needed to
access a user's data (I'm not actually sure what that job would for
consumers), that goes through a separate system which where every access is
logged and audited.

------
aylmao
This goes deep. I see not only when I have used Instagram, but it knows which
instagram profiles and direct messages I opened.

I'm using Android at the moment, of course.

~~~
Cd00d
I don't see that. I see that I opened the Instagram app, but my in-app
activity is in no way displayed.

What steps did you take to see what profiles you opened?

~~~
aylmao
Oh, never mind. Went back to check, and apparently I visited these profiles
through Chrome and not the app.

------
est
I've been disabling JS and cookie for

    
    
        *.google.*/search
    
    

and it worked really well. All this page shows is my youtube activity.

------
weliketocode
The recordings of my voice here from google home are rather scary.

There's a good second or two of recording time before I say the words "Hey,
Google"... which means it's just always recording?!

I know practically speaking I should have known this, but I somehow assumed
that nothing was being recorded until after the trigger word.

~~~
lftl
It's obviously always listening since it has to respond to the trigger word. I
assume that it's got a little buffer, and when it detects the trigger word it
uploads the spoken text plus a little buffer of time before the trigger word
was spoken.

------
saran945
search history is useful. google should provide me "query suggestion" based on
my social circle.

without collecting user data, google,/FB etc can't exist, they can't improve
their services. As a user, I don't care much on the data they collect, as long
as they follow law system in the country they operate. if these huge companies
went beyond the control of the governments, then only the real problem starts.

------
abendy
Chrome will track your localhost activity, too. Make sure you don't title your
hacker-hacker project with too much detail.

------
fallenatreus
This looks like fb comment page than a hacker news one.

So I just downloaded all of my search activity into nice JSON files, and now I
am going to apply a bit of data science and magic stuff using Python and
Node.JS and I will have a nice profile of myself for the past 11 years:

1) What kind of questions did I ask google? (beginning with how, when, where
etc) - how do these questions connect to my personal and career development?
2) Apply some sentiment analysis using sentiment.js on the search terms and
find out if the particular search term was positive, negative or neutral (this
will give me a nice overview of my mood for each day I searched for the last
one decade) 3) do some filtering and data massaging to pick out the exceptions
(ok just a cursory look at the file helped me discovered a forgotten website
project I did 10 years ago as part of college summer project - a work I am
extremely proud of during that time and even now.) - which days, months, the
year I searched the most (or what events triggered the searches - a breakup, a
job search or a side project) 4) discover interesting patterns of my search
profile (what I searched most during college time, after college when
searching for a job, before marriage, after marriage etc.) 5) make a video on
the lines of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU)

so many f _cking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what? Google has
a copy of the same too?_ _baby cry_ * What am gonna do? In a larger scheme of
things, my data profile is just too insignificant.

To quote from the front page of Hacker News post, "The second volume of “My
Struggle”, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s enormous, maddening, brilliant
autobiographical novels, contains some depressing life advice. “If I have
learned one thing,” he sighs, “it is the following: don’t believe you are
anybody. Don’t bloody believe you are somebody…Do not believe that you’re
anything special. Do not believe that you’re worth anything, because you
aren’t.”

Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app
install on the gazillionth device I own. More worried about google's
anticompetitive behaviour (blocking youtube on edge chromium and more recently
making jobs of ad blockers even difficult) and even more larger questions such
as what if Google starts to non exists tomorrow? Life after Google?

~~~
jodrellblank
So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to facebook comments
to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown.

 _so many fcking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what?_

All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save
your searches on your terms.

 _Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app
install on the gazillionth device I own._

Nobody is worried about this strawman.

 _Google has a copy of the same too? baby cry_ What am gonna do?*

Extrapolate this bit " _google 's anticompetitive behaviour_" in your mind to
the point where it affects you personally, then realise that it affects other
people who aren't you, then legislate them hard before that happens.

~~~
fallenatreus
_So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to Facebook comments
to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown._

Not that I wanted to sound superior and compared comments to baby cry, just
wanted to say that people are making a big fuss about something that is
completely trivial.

 _All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save
your searches on your terms._

No, I couldn't have done that until I discovered this post on hn today, even
getting an idea to do that thing would have been chance encounter. Even if I
was interested, seriously, are you suggesting I would have implemented a
custom solution for all of the devices I ever used (since a decade) not to
count different environments and oses they would operate on? My argument was
in the spirit of converting a curse into a boon. Making good out of something
supposedly bad.

 _Nobody is worried about this strawman._

If you really go through the arguments against this activity tracking, you
would find even more such examples. It's not strawman, it's what actually
bothering the people a lot (if you can go through rest of the comments)

 _Extrapolate this bit "google's anticompetitive behaviour" in your mind to
the point where it affects you personally, then realise that it affects other
people who aren't you, then legislate them hard before that happens._

Completely I do understand everybody's unique situation, my approach could
have been malformed but the intention is not. Just trying to show people
something positive out of negative.

And I rest my case.

~~~
JohnFen
> just wanted to say that people are making a big fuss about something that is
> completely trivial.

Completely trivial _to you_. I say that's fair and I respect your stance. It's
also fair that there are people for whom this is not trivial at all. You
should be able to respect their stance.

------
deg4uss3r
Achievement unlocked: No Activity.

------
clarry
Why does oneplus launcher report to google and how do I turn that shit off?

~~~
zebracanevra
Noticed that on my 5T (using Nova Launcher). If I disable the OnePlus Launcher
package the navigation gestures cease to work.

------
gzu
Switch to Firefox, DDG, and iCloud/Fastmail email

------
HNLurker2
I use myactivity to be accountable of my schedule.

------
jcims
No wonder the recommended stories on the google front page have been on point,
lol.

Creeps.

------
amelius
Totally irresponsible. What if another person (colleague, family member,
friend, spouse) opens this on _your_ computer?

This should be opt-in, not opt-out!

~~~
tantalor
Should browser history be opt-in, too?

~~~
lotu
I actually think that might be a good idea. I feel like a lot of people's
privacy concerns would would be muted if browsers defaulted to private
browsing.

------
o10449366
It's honestly hilarious and sad to see so many commenters here defending and
excusing Google because the services they provide are "free." Somehow Hacker
News thinks this argument isn't applicable to Facebook. The truth of the
matter is that both companies are committing huge privacy violations, but
Google has managed to convince Hacker News and the US media (NYT in
particular) that they aren't evil still. Good riddance to all of these
companies.

~~~
detaro
You see plenty people defending Facebook too. Trying to assign a single
opinion to a large group of people doesn't work.

~~~
o10449366
I see this argument a lot of Hacker News and Reddit. While it's true that both
websites are comprised of a large and diverse body of individuals who share
differing opinions and various subjects, that doesn't mean you can't discern
real trends and biases within them. I think it's quite clear from reading any
of the past month's discussions on Facebook:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story)

~~~
skinnymuch
Yeah this is exactly it. And like I stated in sibling comment. People like me
who don’t attack FB don’t defend it either. We are more interested in what we
perceive as over the top hatred of FB that doesn’t make sense. Like you said,
other companies get passes, but FB doesn’t.

There was a recent thread with more than one person comparing cigarettes with
FB. Possibly even FB being worse than cigarettes. Something that has killed
millions of people. But even in that no one defended FB. They just said FB
isn’t as bad as people are making it seem.

------
malvosenior
"Visited YouTube Music Served location-based recommendations Temperature: Warm
Weather: Overcast"

Really? No wonder my recommendations suck so bad, why on earth would where I'm
located impact what music I want to listen to?

Edit: extremely curious why this is being downvoted. Anyone care to comment?

