
Google's Chrome Has My Dead Grandpa's Data, Who Never Used the Internet - mfrw
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/09/07/168245/googles-chrome-has-my-dead-grandpas-data-and-he-never-used-the-internet
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Thorrez
The original article, instead of a slashdot user's summary of the article:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2019/09/03/google-h...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2019/09/03/google-
has-my-dead-grandpas-data-and-he-never-used-the-internet/)

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hbcondo714
Previous HN discussion on this Forbes article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20878525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20878525)

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skybrian
Someone using that Google account probably sent him a package or ordered
something online for him, and it was saved in autocomplete.

Then they forgot they ever did that, so now we have another Google conspiracy
theory because that's the first thing people jump to these days.

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Dylan16807
I'm not sure how that makes it a conspiracy theory. Collecting a giant
organized database out of tiny incidental fragments of data that would
otherwise disappear _is the creepy part_ , in the very likely case it wasn't
saved to that page on purpose.

~~~
saulrh
Unfortunately, people bitch about unreliability and brokenness when things
forget about you. "Stop showing me that, I've searched for <name> thirty times
today and I've clicked on the documentation instead of the porn every single
time." Organizing all of those tiny incidental fragments of data for you _is
something that most people want their browser to do_.

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tylerl
His article says if you know the answer to his questions, then comment below..
but there isn't a _below_ to comment in.

Well, I know the answers, and none of them are particularly interesting.

The "never saved passwords" aren't passwords, they're sites where you've
clicked "never on this site" in response to a "save this password?" prompt. It
has to remember which site you said that on, so that's the list of sites.
Woopitty doo.

The addresses are populated from a combination of: (a) addresses you
intentionally added, (b) addresses automatically saved from form-fills, and
potentially (c) addresses you've saved to your Google account if you're logged
in to Chrome with one. These live in the google payments app; if you have
credit card on file (e.g. if you buy things from google) or if Google pays you
(e.g. adsense), then the "billing address" is attached to your account. Chrome
will auto-fill those addresses.

All the other speculative nonsense in his article is just that. If you give
information to Google in a way that it _looks like you want them to save it,_
then they will save it and regurgitate those details back to you when it looks
like you want them to.

They _don 't_ share this information with anyone else because (and I know this
sounds revolutionary, but bear with me) because you probably don't want them
to.

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3xblah
To be fair, that old Google mission statement, "... organize the world's
information...", said nothing about the internet. As it stands toay, we have
to assume whatever "offline" information about people exists, whether Google
collected it, or acquired it through some acquisition, Google can afford a
license to use it.

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Thorrez
> He passed away on March 1st, 2019 and they said the only time they’ve used
> his information anywhere is with the lawyers, estate managers, bankers, etc
> who were helping in the process of our family dealing with his death.

Did any of those lawyers, estate managers, bankers, etc, send a form to be
filled out in in the browser?

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yoz-y
Huh? The never saved password list does not contain passwords, just the list
of sites when he clicked on "never save this password". Any browser obviously
needs to store this list somewhere, if there wasn't then how would you ever be
able to go back on a decision if you misclicked?

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mirimir
As for others here and on Slashdot, I'm not surprised. I mean, Google's thing
is collecting and cross-referencing data. These are his grandparents. He's
been in touch with them. His parents have been in touch with them. They're
listed in phone books and other public directories etc. So it's not at all
surprising that Google has linked them to him.

And hey, they even linked him to a page with the information.

Now, if this was some secret and forbidden love that they'd linked him to,
_that_ would be disturbing.

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vezycash
>How did his data get associated with my Google account...?

Your phone - gps, cell triangulation, contact, call logs, similar names...

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devoply
All I can say is imagine the Nazis or some American government hell bent on
kicking people out of the country had this level of data on everyone.

~~~
youareostriches
It’s just one national security letter away from them right now.

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orionblastar
Most likely Google accessed Census data with an AI and found your parent
living with them way back when and you living with that parent later on and
added them together for scary results.

~~~
yoz-y
No. "Most likely" they have just entered their address while he was logged in
on their computer and didn't remember it. (The original article even states
this as a possibility and then hand-waves it)

