
See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations - petilon
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7673989
======
romed
A very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of
Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google
Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered?

If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label
works.

Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay
your bills.

~~~
saagarjha
Why can't this be done offline?

~~~
mcny
> Why can't this be done offline?

Where? On every device a user owns?

~~~
olliej
Yes. A better question would be “why does google itself need this information
when it’s just a client side UI feature?”

~~~
blihp
Because... Google's business model. Your ability to see your purchase history
on a Google page is neat, but it seems a safe bet that the real reason they
want your purchase history is because their profile about you as a set of
eyeballs becomes more valuable allowing them to charge higher rates on ads.
Notice that they only claimed to have stopped scraping gmail for ad targeting
purposes, not that they stopped scraping period.

------
fitzroy
I've always assumed they do this since they've recognized and surfaced flight
and event information for years.

I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to
change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable.

Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the
purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of
$1.08 less" or "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer
in your area" etc.

~~~
iKevinShah
To counter on the point of "Google of old might have done something cool with
this info"

This is very, VERY subjective. Even if Google did something like "you pay
$7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" there
will be very similar posts detailing how 'Google reads your monthly payment
data'.

~~~
fitzroy
Sure, but they're already reading your monthly payment data.

My point was just that Google gets and (probably) analyzes aggregate payment
information but the user only gets what they already know. If Google is
sucking up all of that data, they could at least give some insights to users
too.

Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor
marketshare and/or set prices for competing services.

~~~
lettergram
> Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor
> marketshare and/or set prices for competing services.

We already know they do... They'll even milk companies for money, bet against
them, etc. It's clearly they should have their company broken up IMO (and I'm
typically a libertarian)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053819)

------
cromwellian
If you used Inbox, it also categorizes flights, hotels, calendar entries,
restaurant reservations, bills, newsletters, forums, social media updates, and
a host of other useful functions, extracting out entities. The Finances,
Purchases, and Trips bundles are extremely useful.

This information isn't solely surfaceable in Inbox or Gmail UI, go to any
Google Search box and type "my purchases" or "my flights" or "my
reservations".

------
beaner
I kind of like this.

It's already in my email, which they host. I don't see why I should not want
this feature, where they aggregate helpful information for me.

~~~
ve55
You can't think up a single reason why you might not want every purchase
you've made in your entire life to be logged in a centralized database
completely outside of your control and view which will be kept forever and
shared with an unknowable amount of unknown powerful entities that do not care
about your well-being?

Some people are going to have a very rough time when reality finally strikes
them with all of its might. Perhaps it won't be you, but it will happen.

~~~
beaner
They already have my email receipts, what's the difference?

I use venmo - they have it too.

My credit card companies are private companies. Where's the outrage regarding
them?

Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake
news.

~~~
ve55
>Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake
news. We know for a fact data was at least shared with the NSA in the past. We
also know Google complies with legal requests, could have a partial data
breach in the future, could change terms or undergo some type of merger or
acquisition which would include your data, etc.

The point here is that it is completely outside of your control. If you want
to give all of the control in your life to Google because they have treated
you (mostly) well (so far), that's up to you. But as for myself and others, we
will refrain because we can think up many reasons why it might not be a smart
choice in the long run.

~~~
beaner
Yeah, but now you're changing the argument from selling data for profit to
simply complying with the law.

If Google complying with the law is something someone feels at-risk for, then
I understand not choosing to use them. But that's really a lesson that goes
for any centralized service.

~~~
ve55
I haven't claimed that Google sells your data for a profit. Other centralized
services carry risks as well, but some of them have profit models that are
focused on something other than scooping up every bit of data possible, with
some even having profit models specifically focused on the opposite.

------
partiallypro
When I first read this was I was troubled, and I am certainly a Google critic,
but it seems to specifically say this is for your usage only. It's not being
used for their ad network or for them to see behavior. It's used in the same
manner as tracking packages, etc. If or when they start using this for their
own internal usage to see use purchasing behavior, and telling adwords
customers what purchase/products were popular so they could convert, that's
when I'd have a major problem with this. As it stands now, I don't see it as a
major problem.

~~~
krishanath
If a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the
frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not
perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. So today you don't see a
major problem. Even though every single purchase you made in your entire life
is being logged in a central database that's out of your control. OK. You are
slowly being brought to a boil, and you're not perceiving the danger.

~~~
Aunche
The legend of the frog being boiled slowly is actually completely false
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog)).
The frog will simply jump out when it notices that it gets too hot. Likewise,
it's pretty easy to see the distinction between Google using information to
help people vs. using information for profit.

------
GeekyBear
It's also likely that Google buys a copy of your credit card purchase history.

>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long
time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with
information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t
purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers,
it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of
all credit and debit card purchases.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-
tracks-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-your-
credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/)

Finding that tidbit out was my own personal bridge too far.

------
iwalsh
Google reads all Gmail messages, presumably for targeted advertising. In this
case it looks like they're giving folks a UI to look at (some of) what they're
gathering.

------
lunchables
Am I overreacting by seriously considering starting the process of migrating
from gmail? It's not this singular incident of course, but just the continued
pattern of behavior from Google for the last couple years. I really have lost
all faith in them respecting their users.

~~~
jhall1468
What do you mean by respect? Your privacy?

Move to Fastmail if that's what your after. You are using a free service,
because you are the product. That's not about respect, it's about your (lack)
of understanding of the business relationship you entered. If you aren't
comfortable with that, you're going to have to pay actual money.

~~~
the_snooze
What assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting
your privacy? It wasn’t that long ago that we found out that telecom companies
were selling fine location data of all their paying customers.

The reality is that irresponsibility and disrespect for users are rampant in
the tech world. That’s entirely companies’ doing.

~~~
ardy42
> What assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting
> your privacy?

If you use a free service, you basically have assurances that they're _not_
respecting your privacy. The probability of a paid service respecting your
privacy is greater than zero, at least.

Also, not all paid services are created equal. You still have to do more due
diligence past just throwing money at someone who'll take it.

------
kenhwang
It's probably safe to assume Google reads all your emails and can probably
target advertising off it one way or another. We can probably thank GDPR for
forcing companies to disclose what they know about you.

~~~
nomel
No assumption needed, it's right in the terms of use. I'm surprised to see how
surprised people are about this. The fact that they scrape email, for targeted
ads and features has been known since 2004.

~~~
halflings
See my post in parent, this is nowhere in the terms of service.

------
kps
This is [https://schema.org/](https://schema.org/) data.

------
geekrax
Just one perspective: When it comes to scraping data and storing in single
entity (Google servers), it's more about powering the ecosystem than a single
client or the UI.

Google doesn't just live in a single client. As a user (by giving up my
privacyto Google), I can ask my Google home how my day is while getting ready
for work. I can see the status of my flight tomorrow in my Google app (or
Google home screen in Android) without a single search - just because it
parsed my email with itinerary. Same way, I can see status for my FedEx
package right there just because they violeted my privacy and scraped when I
purchased something.

Imagine how much friction it'd require to setup such devices if everything was
processed on client side or required explicit opt-in before accessing the
info.

Of course as a side effect, I get advertisements of standing desk even a month
after buying one, but probably the alternative would be to pay for all these
AI and assist?

Again, just a user's perspective.

~~~
ardy42
> Imagine how much friction it'd require to setup such devices if everything
> was processed on client side or required explicit opt-in before accessing
> the info.

Gmail's basically parsing emails, so I don't think it would be that hard to do
client-side if there was a community effort to create and maintain the
parsers. That's certainly doable, because ad-block lists have some of the same
characteristics and are community maintained.

------
40acres
This is one of my favorite features of Inbox. Sounds like more transparency is
required but overall this is pretty nice to have.

~~~
ndnxhs
Its nice data for me to have and creepy data for google to have. In an ideal
world it would be processed locally.

------
triodan
I appreciate knowing this and I don't fault Google for collecting it; I
definitely can see the value in this, both for the customer and Google
themselves.

I just wish there's the option to erase the items there, or even better
disable the collection entirely.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Join Google for Work and it disables most of this. You'll still get things
like location data and time to leave, but email features such as Inbox, etc
were not scanned at all while I was using them.

------
lstamour
If they’re not doing this for advertising alone, why can I only see my
personal purchases and not company ones for G Suite logins? As a small
business owner this kind of data would be a fantastic API resource and a
significant value-add from Gmail... I suppose I could use the purchases label,
but... it’s interesting they don’t aggregate and display it the same way...
thus leading me to conclude that this page is purely to share data used for
advertising purposes only, and G Suite accounts don’t have Gmail ads...

------
boomboomsubban
Hasn't gmail done this since their 2004 beta release? There was even
opposition to it at the time. [https://www.privacyrights.org/blog/thirty-one-
privacy-and-ci...](https://www.privacyrights.org/blog/thirty-one-privacy-and-
civil-liberties-organizations-urge-google-suspend-gmail)

------
jonnytran
Why has the title and link of this post changed?

It used to link here:
[https://myaccount.google.com/purchases](https://myaccount.google.com/purchases)

The title used to be, "Google reads your Gmail and scrapes your purchases".

It also was #1 on the front page of HN. Now it's gone.

What happened? Conspiracy theories welcome :-)

------
Mac_McMeans
I use PrismCipher to protect sensitive messages. I can't stop Google from
reading my email, but I sure can stop them from getting anything out of it. I
don't want to switch to another provider because as fitzroy stated, it's
"hella reliable."

------
amyjess
I'm amused by the "Estimated fulfillment by" dates on my DoorDash orders.

------
expertentipp
Duh, they host your email and are easily the best functionality- and
reliability-wise email provider. For free, yet the money has to come from
somewhere. It's hard to find paying email provider matching the Gmail.

------
gdsdfe
Holy shit! It's something to think you know, it's another to see...

------
binjo
I really thought this was obvious by now. If the data wasn't being scraped and
analysed somewhere how would the categorisation of 'Purchases' work as well as
all those payment reminders?

------
tern
> You don't have any purchases

Any idea why I might not see any purchases here?

~~~
partiallypro
If you're using GSuite, it doesn't display purchases.

~~~
tern
That's it, thanks!

------
hclalpha
Known to anyone using Google inbox...

------
bronco21016
It’s not just online purchases either. Any merchant sending an emailed receipt
is also scooped up.

------
nguyendat
Is there anything else they scapes from my email but not public yet ?

------
nitins
I like this feature. It has always been there on Inbox.

------
nkassis
Time for Amazon to launch an email service I guess.

------
petilon
I was shocked when I stumbled on this. All of my purchases, have been scraped
from my emails, including every line item, where I purchased these items from
and so on. If they are scraping this from my emails without my permission,
what else are they scraping? What else does Google know about me? If
everything in my emails is scraped by Google it is possible that they know
more about me than I do about myself. Very scary. How will this be misused in
the future? Who will have access to this in the future?

~~~
jhall1468
> If they are scraping this from my emails without my permission, what else
> are they scraping?

YOU GAVE THEM YOUR PERMISSION.

Maybe, in the future, read the TOS and Privacy Policies rather than just
pressing accept and acting offended when they do EXACTLY what they said they'd
do.

Had you done that, you'd also know exactly who has access to that information
and, if you read when they notify you of policy updates, who will have access
in the future.

Why is this so hard to understand for people? Gmail is not free, you are
paying with the information gleaned from it. If you aren't ok with that, start
shelling out money.

~~~
ericd
What good paid alternatives are there?

~~~
jonnytran
There was a whole thread on this recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574)

~~~
ericd
Cool, thanks for the pointer!

------
njn
News at 11.

------
browsercoin
at first I was disturbed by the title but upon arriving at that page I
panicked....

I may be a financially illiterate person....fuck Pokerstars and their $500
spin & gos.

I would've never seen this without having a comprehensive look at all my
online purchases....I didn't realize how reckless I was with money....damn it

------
aviv
Is there actually anyone on HN that is surprised by this?

