
Google – My Activity - sergiotapia
https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
======
imh
I hate that google products are such crap if you don't let them remember
everything about you. I deactivated the maps tracking on the privacy page
recently because the wording made it sounds creepy, like they can keep track
of where I am whenever they have it, not just the destinations I ask for
navigation to. As a result, they don't suggest _any places at all_ and instead
make me type it out until the generic autocomplete gets it. No local storage
on my phone, not even speeding up the autocomplete for the single place on
google maps I have favorited. They seem to be very much all or nothing :(
Either we track you everywhere or nowhere at all and gimp our products.

~~~
taneq
It's not a technical limitation, either. There's plenty of cases where they
could use use information locally on your device without sending it back to
the mothership, but instead they deliberately cripple their services if you
don't allow access.

One example - have you ever noticed how Google Maps has barely any street
names any more? And the streets that are named are random tiny side streets,
no matter how far you zoom in or out. It's because it's designed to be used in
Directions mode with location services enabled, and _only_ in Directions mode
with location services enabled. You don't need street names if you're a dot
following a blue line. Just coincidentally, this is the mode where they get
full information about your journey.

~~~
halflings
How can they suggest places without sending your location to their servers? I
would expect all the "intelligence" (place recommendation etc.) to be
implemented server-side.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Very simply. It's as trivial as you can imagine.

You prefetch the list of locations in the area of interest (there won't be
_that_ many compared to the humongous amounts of space Google apps consume
already), you keep your user's "personality matrix" synchronized, and then
when user asks, e.g., for a restaurant nearby, you display them from off-line
cache, sorted by distance, characteristics and by how well they match user's
personality matrix.

It would be that simple, if it was about actually suggesting places. But it
isn't. It's about suggesting places _that pay for advertising_ and
successfully billing them, while also collecting as much data about the users
as possible. It's a common occurrence on mobile (and also increasingly common
in hardware and desktop software) - things that don't need to be on-line are
put on the Internet nevertheless, to facilitate a specific business model.

~~~
s3r3nity
Someone once told me that this is how Apple Maps works so that they can
maintain a high privacy standard - though I'd be curious if someone else could
verify.

------
gerhardi
I love the location timeline feature. For example last summer I did a road
trip driving from Finland to Venice, Italy through Sweden, Denmark, Germany,
Austria, Switzerland and France. Many times after the trip I've checked up
exact locations for DSLR photos and actual hiking routes on the mountains.
What was the name of the small medieval German town and the cafe that we had
the perfect flammkuchen by the town square? Just a sec, I'll check out on the
location history! This is only one kind of a example where I have found the
location timeline useful.

Edit: Also I've found it useful to check actual driving times for commuting
and other trips. "Last tuesday I left home at 08:35 and took the tram and it
took me 17 minutes."

------
Xeoncross
I really wish this actually showed my activity. This is a partially honest,
very limited version of my real google account activity.

I would love to data mine what Google has on me. I'm sure I'll get a copy
someday. Almost everything on the internet eventually is released via
acquisitions, subpoenas, hackers, etc...

~~~
tantalor
[https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

~~~
gruez
that doesn't provide everything though. at the very least, it doesn't have all
the advertising dossier they have on me.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Perhaps that is because they are unable to join your advertising profile with
your account, under various terms of services and agreements.

"We will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally
identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent."

So you can't really expect them to be able to cough up the contents of profile
0x3f47d0387acb94857 when asked for the history of your account, if they are
forbidden from joining the two domains together.

~~~
tombrossman
> Perhaps that is because they are unable to join your advertising profile
> with your account, under various terms of services and agreements.

You should read this and reconsider. From the article: _" The change is
enabled by default for new Google accounts. Existing users were prompted to
opt-in to the change this summer."_
[https://www.propublica.org/article/google-has-quietly-
droppe...](https://www.propublica.org/article/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-
on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking)

~~~
Godel_unicode
So? "Users were prompted to opt-in" != "Everyone chose to opt-in".

~~~
thecatspaw
in my past experience google is a master in disguising these opt-in prompts as
mandatory, with a tiny tiny X somewhere or a "skip" button only showing up
when unticking the correct checkboxes

------
rtpg
It's kinda cool to be able to look back at this stuff, I almost wish this were
more integrated into the rest of Google so that I could rely on this (and for
better awareness).

~~~
adamrt
Just out of curiosity, how old are you, if you don't mind?

Your comment makes me assume you are very young or you work at Google. I don't
mean that snarky, but your comment is a very different response than the rest
of this thread.

~~~
wingerlang
I'm not the one you are asking but I share the same thoughts on general search
history.

I'm late 20s and I don't have any affiliation with Google.

It is nice because I can go back to 10 years ago and see what I searched,
essentially taking me back to that time and loads of memories come back. "Why
was I searching for cheat for this game? Oh yeah because this was the summer
when I was playing with person X, Y and Z while doing A, B and C".

It's just kinda.. nice.

~~~
nitrogen
That's your interface to the data. Now imagine an NSA-like interface to the
data. What is in there that you might not want future employers, dates, or
others to know about the corners of your (and everyone's) life? Then imagine
if your least preferred political candidate gets elected several times in a
row and has access to all that data about potential "undesirables". Think of
the journalists, the political volunteers, the victims of stalking or abuse,
the LGBTQ, the women who had an abortion after being pressured into sex, and
think of that information in the hands of a corrupt regime, or hacked by a
hostile foreign power (or radical religious hacker group).

~~~
wingerlang
This potential scenario is valid, but it doesn't change my mind.

~~~
nitrogen
History features could be implemented in a way that keeps all sensitive data
on devices you control. The only way to encourage more privacy-respecting
implementations is to consider the downsides, especially for people less
fortunate or less mainstream or at greater risk, and demand technology that
gives us the features we want without harming the privacy of everyone else in
the process.

------
c3RlcGhlbnI_
I use this relatively often. Mostly because it provides history search across
devices. So if I ever looked for something before and found just the right
answer I can retrace my steps from only a vague recollection.

However the UI is a bit awkward for that usage. It seems to definitely be
designed more for the average user who is using it exclusively for history
deletion, like the activity log on facebook. The default grouping of entries
makes deleting them in chunks easy but scanning through them hard. The UI also
makes it easy to spot what site an entry is for at a glance but chooses not to
show the url despite having plenty of space to.

~~~
rorosaurus
I was just thinking the same thing. Very strange that Chrome doesn't provide
users cross-device history search, while Google stores that information in my
account activity anyway..

~~~
lexicality
It does for me. Doesn't chrome://history/ show you all the devices you're
signed into?

------
personjerry
No activity. I deactivated all my settings years ago, I'm glad it hasn't
magically reset.

~~~
LeoPanthera
I appreciate that Google allows me to turn their data collection off, though I
still avoid Google services where possible. I hope that this page tells the
truth.

~~~
JoshMnem
It appears that their interface does not tell the truth. My YouTube search
history is off, but the YouTube history is still displaying on that page, so
they are still collecting and storing the info.

~~~
ruipgil
I found the same about YT history. None of the videos that I view on the
laptop are shown in the history, only videos viewed on mobile.

I think it's because I block ip addresses, that track your data, on the
laptop.

------
roomey
If you are concerned you aren't getting all your data from google, if you live
in Europe this probably applies:
[https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/Accessing-Your-
Personal-I...](https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/Accessing-Your-Personal-
Information/r/14.htm)

Accessing Your Personal Information

How can I see what information a body or company holds about me? Under Section
3 of the Data Protection Acts, you have a right to find out, free of charge,
if a person (an individual or an organisation) holds information about you.
You also have a right to be given a description of the information and to be
told the purpose(s) for holding your information.

You must make the request in writing. The person must send you the information
within 21 days.

Under Section 4 of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003, you have a right
to obtain a copy, clearly explained, of any information relating to you kept
on computer or in a structured manual filing system or intended for such a
system by any entity or organisation. All you need to do is write to the
organisation or entity concerned and ask for it under the Data Protection
Acts. Your request could read as follows:

Dear ... I wish to make an access request under Section 4 of the Data
Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 for a copy of any information you keep about me,
on computer or in manual form in relation to.... (Fill in as much information
as possible to assist the organisations to locate the data that you are
interested in accessing e.g. customer account number, staff number, or PPS
number (if you are writing to a public sector organisation such as the Revenue
Commissioners or the Department of Social Protection)).

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
Can you request your information if you don't live in Europe? I'd be really
interested in finding out what info Google has on me.

Do you know of anyone that has previously requested access to their info? I'd
be extremely curious of what the response looks like (even if it had to be
anonimized to protect the requester's privacy).

~~~
roomey
I imagine it would be a link to that takeout page :) I haven't tried it
myself. This can be used with any company in Ireland, anyone who used facebook
in Europe for example, linked-in, twitter etc

------
agumonkey
Interesting stream. Another one is Google maps on Android. I just went through
my month of commutés, corelated with pictures taken. 'interesting'

~~~
chipperyman573
>I just went through my month of commutés, corelated with pictures taken.
'interesting'

That's because you used Google Maps to track your location history (which, at
least when I first discovered the feature, had to be manually enabled), then
took pictures which you uploaded to Google Photos. As a HN user, I'm sure you
know that images often have location metadata. Google simply connected the two
bits of information you provided to them by using their services.

Honestly, of all things that google does, this is probably the least creepy.

~~~
agumonkey
Oh I didn't mean it was a scandal, just that tracked web queries feel one way,
tracked location history feel very different. It's an automatic blog of
another side of your life and day by day it amounts to a fair bit of data that
is easy not to see if not shown.

------
Robadob
Appears you can actually search your youtube watch history here, I've always
been annoyed that you can't inside the actual youtube website when I'm trying
to find things I watched a few months earlier.

~~~
shalmanese
It's weird youtube can't even remember what I've watched. I'm constantly
having to go into my recommendations and selecting Not Interested -> Tell us
why -> I've seen this video before.

~~~
hmate9
I think YouTube recommends those videos to you, because people are actually
more likely to rewatch videos they have enjoyed in the past. So YouTube gets
more views from old videos -> more revenue.

------
fuqted
I'm mildly insulted whenever they play a spanish ad. They've been doing this
more and more lately. I don't speak spanish but I'm glad they seem to know I'm
hispanic.

------
runesoerensen
Recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12042613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12042613)

------
petre
Good. It shows no activity. I've disabled every form of data collection and
don't use maps (using Here WeGo with offline maps instead).

------
badloginagain
Looking at the (mostly) devops related stuff I've searched for, it surprised
me how naive an automated ad optimization service can be to offer relevant
recommendations to me.

I thought it was a carefully formed bit of magic. It looks like I make it easy
for them.

If I could do any one useful thing with this data, is recommend _people_ I can
connect with who are domain experts in the things I search for. Like if
there's a Vagrant/Chef wizard with a fairly prolific web presence, I'd like to
know about them.

------
glandium
Funny thing: I had everything already disabled except the Youtube ones, but it
didn't show any activity more recent than April. Except I'm using Youtube
extensively, and the history (both search and views) in Youtube itself has the
most recent stuff from today.

Even more interesting, I now disabled the Youtube activities there, but the
new things I've watched and searched after the change are _still_ showing up
in Youtube's history (but not on the myactivity page, thankfully).

------
JoshMnem
I have all of my history turned off, including YouTube search history, but
it's still showing me my YouTube search history there.

------
reitanqild
Hangs in Firefox mobile on s7.

Google, you of all can do better.

------
kngspook
They used to have another interface for this which was way more powerful, and
let you delete all your history for a service at once (ie. delete all of your
YouTube search history). This seems like a downgrade designed to make you work
harder to erase your history, since you have to do it item by item.

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

Does this not work for you? You can delete by any time range, for any service.

------
koshak
>Sie haben die Kontrolle

>Sie können ganz einfach einzelne Einträge oder ganze Themenbereiche löschen.
Außerdem können Sie in den Einstellungen festlegen, welche Daten mit Ihrem
Konto verknüpft werden sollen.

In two out of three occurrences I read "Sie" as "They" )) Fun!

------
mef
Hmm... my searches of my activity don't show up in my activity

------
dolzenko
I'm not the big privacy advocate, but have this turned off because I can't see
any convincing (to/for me) use case for storing all that crap :)

------
ashitlerferad
These settings are not turned on

Web & App Activity

Voice & Audio Activity

YouTube Watch History

YouTube Search History

Perfect!

------
intoverflow2
This is super unnerving to me.

Has anyone in this company actual had an encounter with a REAL person not a
Google employee in the past few years?

------
dingo_bat
I didn't know google was tracking individual apps that I use! And every voice
search is stored too.

------
ArtDev
A solid reminder why my main browser is Firefox.

I only use Chrome for development.

Best of both worlds.

~~~
chipperyman573
Firefox uses google's safe browsing web service[0], so Google gets your data
anyway (unless you've disabled it).

[0]: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-
and-m...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-
protection-work)

~~~
lorenzhs
Disabling safe browsing is bad advice. It uses a local bloom filter and
transmits only gashed of prefixes of the URL if the filter says "maybe". It's
pretty well thought out and you should not just recommend to people to turn it
off, it's a valuable security tool, and certainly preferable to a ransomware
infection, wouldn't you say?

~~~
chipperyman573
I never said to turn it off... I said that google will get your browsing data.
That said, I firmly believe that the best antivirus is common sense. Everyday
users should keep it turned on but people who read HN (should) know enough to
be safe without it.

~~~
Sylos
That's the exact point, though, Google does not get your browsing data.

What Firefox does, is that it downloads a complete list of hashes from
Google's Safebrowsing server. Every instance of Firefox does this every 30
minutes. Nothing identifying about this.

Firefox then stores only the first 32 bits of those hashes to save on space
(as the list is unsurprisingly gigantic). Then Firefox does a lookup against
this locally stored list whenever it loads a webpage. If a webpage's first 32
bits should be on that list, then it obviously has to check if it's actually
the complete hash that matches. But for that, it requests all hashes with same
first 32 bits from _Mozilla 's_ server. They proxy the list for that purpose.

So, it's at best Mozilla which can guess that you browsed to one of the many
pages that share the first 32 bits of the hash. Google will have no clue about
it.

And in fact, they even throw in a few noise entries when requesting the full
hashes from their server, so even Mozilla actually doesn't know for sure which
first 32 bits you browsed to.

[https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-
works-...](https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-in-
firefox/)

------
TJTorola
"Visited [insert all my untracked searches here] at DuckDuckGo"

------
c-smile
Hmmm... Did I ask anyone explicitly to store that information?

------
amelius
Google pretends that it can keep this information behind closed doors without
sharing anything with advertisers. But this is not true. Data leaks out, and
here is an example of how this might happen.

Let's say you are interested in knowing which people watch a lot of cat
videos. And let's pretend these people don't want to publicly share with
everybody that they like cat videos. To find these people, you simply start a
Google Ad campaign targeted at people who like cat videos. But the ad will be
for an unrelated product, for example, coffee pads. Now every time somebody
clicks on your ad and perhaps orders your coffee pads, you know that this
person likes cat videos.

Ergo, your data is not compeletely safe with Google and it can leak, contrary
to what they make us believe.

~~~
bduerst
Except Google let's you control what ads you're targeted for:
[https://www.google.com/settings/u/1/ads/authenticated](https://www.google.com/settings/u/1/ads/authenticated)

In your hypothetical, Cat lovers who want to keep that information private can
remove 'Pets & Animals - Pets - Cats' from their account targeting. Now they
won't see the coffee pad ads.

And no, coffee pad advertisers can't target you based on your pornography
viewing habits, HSV cream purchases, or any number of slippery slope examples.

~~~
amelius
Google had a point if their service was opt-in, but it isn't.

Also, the topic "Cat videos" does not appear, so I have to create it myself?
How do I know if Google matches e.g. "Cat" with "Cat videos"?

Further, my other interests may correlate with being a cat video fan, so I
have to blank them out as well. But how do I know which they are?

Sorry, but this solution is clearly broken.

(Btw, how does Facebook handle this?)

~~~
bduerst
Advertisers can't target display ads to "Cat videos", they can only target
audience topics - i.e. the ones you see and set to your account.

If you think a topic is correlated with one you want to keep private, then you
can also keep that topic private by removing it as well. It's well within your
own judgement and control, so no, it's not broken.

Facebook lets you do exactly the same thing:
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/](https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/)

~~~
amelius
Google's ad controls panel says this (after fully disabling targeted
advertising):

"Ads you see may still be based on your general location (such as city or
county) or recent searches"

Hence, broken.

Also, how about AdWords? As far as I know, you can link any search term (even
a competitor's name) to any type of ad you want.

~~~
bduerst
If you purchase something from a location based ad, the advertiser is going to
have your billing and shipping information, so that's just splitting hairs at
this point.

You're thinking of keyword advertising, not display. AdWords can do both
display and keyword advertising, the latter of which is different. Advertisers
don't see demographic information about who clicks on their search ads because
they can can only target by keywords, so your theory of leaky data doesn't
apply there either.

That's also the second time you've moved the goal posts as you've learned more
about how online advertising works. Kind of reminds me of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

~~~
amelius
> If you purchase something from a location based ad, the advertiser is going
> to have your billing and shipping information, so that's just splitting
> hairs at this point.

Emphasis is on "recent searches", not on the location.

> They can can only target by keywords, so your theory of leaky data doesn't
> apply there either

Yes, you are more right here (and here only). If ads are only shown when you
are actively searching for their keywords, then whether there is a leak is
questionable. But an advertiser could still trick one to reveal information,
like in a phishing attack, by using keywords unrelated to the ad.

> That's also the second time you've moved the goal posts as you've learned
> more about how online advertising works.

Thanks for educating me, but my argument still stands. In fact that second
time, I placed the goal post back at its original place, since apparently,
Google's ad controls do not allow one to turn off ads based on recent
searches.

------
azinman2
Terrible. A minimal attempt at data transparency. A fine grained reverse
chronological list of potentially tens of thousands of data points gives you
no ability to sort/filter/understand what's there.

Google will also never tell you what they've inferred about you, what ads have
been tailored for you, and why. Their real gold is still hidden.

~~~
wmf
What they've inferred about you:
[https://www.google.com/settings/ads](https://www.google.com/settings/ads)

~~~
azinman2
That's very little of what their models have on you to power each product.

~~~
Klathmon
What makes you think they have more than that?

I'm pretty sure Google has plenty of users willing to share their data that
they wouldn't risk the legal and political shitstorm that would come out of
secretly storing data about you...

~~~
azinman2
Open up Google Inbox or Google Now -- all these 'smart' features are extracted
and interpreted from your underlying data. Or do a google search logged in vs
not logged in.. the results will be different.

The models are very complex and often not something that can be meaningfully
represented, especially when you're a data point inside a neural network.

I have no idea why I'm being downvoted... anyone who has done any machine
learning can attest to these basic facts, not to mention I've worked at
Google.

~~~
Klathmon
I never said it wasn't complex or could be meaningfully represented, but you
were implying that they have more "data" than they are showing.

If you are worried because they are making "hidden associations" from this
data, my question would be how to display that? How would they possibly show
you all of the assumptions, associations, interpretations, and calculations
they did, do, or will gather from your data?

If you are going to fault them for not displaying that data, shouldn't it be
possible to display it in the first place?

~~~
azinman2
A fine grained list of thousands of items can have summaries. These summaries
can reflect actual models, or be new ways of visualizing and digging into the
data.

Existing models can be depicted in a wide variety of ways. They could either
be the results of previous decisions (description through action), they could
be expressed as is should the model be more human-readable (e.g. text
clusters), they could be visualized somewhat directly [1], or they could
visualized indirectly [2].

"My activity" seems like a nice idea, but the execution ends up providing
little value to few people. If the idea is transparency over Google's personal
data on you (how they framed it in an email to me), it does a poor job. If the
idea is a better understanding of yourself (quantified life), it does a poor
job. If the idea is finding some youtube video you watched recently, then it's
mediocre depending on how long ago it was. In what scenario is it some
spectacular & useful product?

[1]
[http://static.azinman.com/pdfs/dataportraiture.pdf](http://static.azinman.com/pdfs/dataportraiture.pdf)

[2] [http://yosinski.com/deepvis](http://yosinski.com/deepvis)

