

Google Dashboard: This is a brief of how much Google knows about you - markbao
https://www.google.com/dashboard/

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stingraycharles
You're forgetting one way more important thing: logs. Your access patterns to
Google's sites is way more important than the information you see on this
dashboard; based on your access patterns, most of the information in that
dashboard can be predicted anyway.

~~~
roc
[http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=...](http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=162743)

Sounds like they have no intention of sharing the logs or cookie-related data
either. We're still expected to simply trust that they're sufficiently
anonymized and not actually linked back to our google accounts.

~~~
alain94040
_We're still expected to simply trust that they're sufficiently anonymized_

Actually Google fought in court to make sure that it didn't have to anonymize
its logs, ever. So it's a safe bet to assume that your logs are _not_
anonymized.

~~~
warp
According to the page linked in the parent:

 _We anonymize this log data by removing part of the IP address (after 9
months) and cookie information (after 18 months)._

~~~
alain94040
Sorry, I wasn't clear. After 18 months, they don't keep the original IP
anymore, that is correct, but they can still cross-reference everything. Which
means that in practice, they can still figure out who you are, they haven't
lost any "connectivity" of the data.

But to make regulators happy, after 18 months, they can't spit out your raw IP
addresses. Feel better now?

~~~
stingraycharles
That makes me wonder what "anonymous" actually means. As I understand it,
Google anonymizing the logs in fact means they don't store any information
that can lead directly back to you: as in, based on a single log file, they
couldn't say who you are.

In the greater context of things, however, it is not anonymous: based on your
previous access patterns, and your current (< 18 months) access patterns, they
could link your anonymized logs with your unanonymized logs. Is that still
anonymous then ?

This all reminds me of some research from Germany I heard about a few years
ago: basically, if you have someone's ZIP code, age, gender and education, you
can get a > 99% accuracy resolving who this person is in real life.

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stakent
There are other places where Google gathers lots of information about you:
blogspot, youtube, all sites using Google Analytics, all sites serving Adsense
ads, all sites serving doubleclick ads, all sites using Google Analytics.

So:

Clear your cookies.

Use tor.

Don't forget about flash cookies.

Don't forget that your computer's real time clock skew can reveal it's
identity. By examining packets sent from it.

Funny times to live?

~~~
dennisgorelik
Why is that a problem that Google knows about you? Google knows about me a
lot, and I think it's a good thing, because: 1) I might be found by relevant
people. 2) It adds up to my reputation, for example it may help to send email
and have it delivered, because I look like a real person.

What are the downsides of Google watching you/me?

~~~
stakent
Yes, there are advantages being known online.

But we are _not_ talking about about search results. We are talking about wide
and not controlled by us stream of data stored somewhere.

Risks for a user?

For example exploiting one's weaknesses by, in most trivial case, serving her
ads or search results tailored to push her to make desired action.

I, personally, prefer to build my online image by taking _my own conscious
actions_ , not by data hungry algorithm running by corporation which goal is
to maximize shareholder's value.

Edit: added missing _not_ in first paragraph

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3dFlatLander
I logged in thinking there wouldn't be very much on me, since I had disabled
web history when the feature first came out.

It seems to have "reactivated" itself around October 2009 for some reason.
Also, despite google telling me they only collect web searches, my history for
image, news, and video searches are also included.

Now I feel slightly uncomfortable.

~~~
jules
More importantly they also know which urls you visit for the sites that
display google ads / use google analytics.

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msluyter
Woah! Just checked it and discovered that my personal calendar was public.
This has been helpful already.

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brewski
Under Account I clicked on "Websites authorized to access the account" and saw
that clickpass had access to my Google Contacts. Why do they need access to
that?

~~~
dschobel
I saw that as well. No idea when I approved that one...

~~~
healsdata
Logging in to HN using Google prompted me to give Clickpass access to Google
Contacts. Logging into StackOverflow with Google doesn't do that, so maybe
Clickpass is using an old/weird method of Google auth?

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maukdaddy
Wow it is really sobering to see how much information one company has. Now
imagine this spread across all the businesses you interact with on a daily
basis.

~~~
duh
> sobering to see how much information one company has

> Now imagine

Uhm - have you ever checked your credit report?

~~~
jrockway
The credit reporting agencies don't actually verify any of that information,
so most of it is junk. Apparently my "legal name" is "Johnathon Rockway".
Yeah...

~~~
duh
> don't actually verify any of that information,

> so most of it is junk

How is this a logical progression? And does google "verify" any of its
information?

~~~
jrockway
Google collects its own information, so it is in control of the quality. When
you pull someone's credit report, you don't know if what's listed is entirely
accurate, and you don't know what it's omitting. So there is a difference.

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felixmar
They should add delete buttons to all listed services which remove the service
and content or at least reset everything to the default empty state.

~~~
fnid
"Oh the better to advertise to you my pretty"

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dskhatri
Also related, Google's Data Liberation Front: <http://www.dataliberation.org/>

"The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular
goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google
products."

They provide information on how to "escape" from a particular service ie.
download/migrate data from that service. However, I can't find any indication
of whether there is a way to permanently delete all your data from their
servers.

~~~
teeja
That's a Good Thing. Ever spent a year adding data to a site (like oh, say,
Stumbleupon) only to notice that there's no way to _get your work out_? I did.
DL lets you export to several other blogformats. That's much cooler.

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trjordan
I find it interesting that there is so much redundant and conflicting
information in there. Mine has 3 different addresses, from the last three
places I lived (and hadn't updated).

I understand that they are all different services, but since they're all
controlled by Google, why not add something to sync them? I'm pretty
comfortable with all the information that's up there, so why not have the
information constant, and leave the privacy settings down in the individual
applications?

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xiaoma
Even on a laptop with English versions of Windows and Firefox and my Google
accounts language set to English, it _still_ displays that page in Chinese.

What a terrible design choice, assuming the intent is to make it easy for
users to see how much of their personal information is out there.

For anybody frustrated by this behavior, the way to force it into English is
to append ?hl=en to the end of the URL.

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appathy
Microsoft should come out with a similar service. I could use it as my
homepage. Then I would have a blank page when I open up my browser.

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ComputerGuru
A while back, I did everything I could to clear my YouTube account settings.
Something I did apparently broke their code, and now YouTube viewing history
is disabled.

There is _no_ option to disable YouTube viewing history in the preferences on
either YouTube or Google, but somehow, thankfully, YouTube no longer records
my video history. :)

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ErrantX
I scroll and I scroll and still not at the bottom!

Apparently I use Google a scary amount :D

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stephen
I'd be more interested in knowing what Google's ad server (doubleclick) knows
about me.

~~~
jrockway
Back when I worked at Doubleclick, the answer was "not much". We were not
legally allowed to store your IP address, for example. (But, of course, we
could store the md5 hash of your IP address. I love the legal system.)

I am more worried about Analytics, which provides details of everything you do
on nearly every site on the Internet to one centralized source. Needless to
say, this is the reason why I have NoScript installed.

~~~
enomar
Analytics has the same restrictions on storing or using PII (personally
identifiable information). None of that gets linked with your account.

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zargon
I don't have a google account. Could someone describe what is listed if you
do?

~~~
greyman
Basically, all the Google services you subscribed to, like Gmail, Alerts,
Blogger, Youtube, Calendar, Docs, Health, how many Picasa Web Albums uploaded,
what is your recent favorite Youtube video, recent Task, or your recent Web
History (disabled for me).

~~~
zargon
Thanks. It's kind of surprising I've managed to avoid all that stuff. ;)

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ropiku
Did they forget a staging link ?
[http://img.skitch.com/20091105-bk6g841s7gwags3y84ksf9gtgi.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20091105-bk6g841s7gwags3y84ksf9gtgi.png)

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vito
Hmm. Some of these searches definitely aren't mine. I wonder if I'm signed in
on my mom's computer or something... These date back quite a bit.

 _looks over shoulder_

~~~
aaronblohowiak
yea, me too. all of these searches about burning sensations while peeing.. i
mean, uhh...;)

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tome
I don't have any information about any searches I've done on google.com (and I
definitely have done them!). Is there something special I need to do to see
that info?

~~~
tome
Ah I see, something called "Google Web History" exists to explicitly track
your searches. I never knew this before, and I'm glad I'm not signed up!

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mlok
Not much interesting about me. I am happy not to have relied too much on
Google for the last decade. God knows it can be difficult sometimes.
Temptation is high.

~~~
trebor
I use Google products, but not _that_ much. The simple point is to: opt out of
what you don't need. I use GMail, predominantly, and beyond that don't have
much other information associated with my account.

Privacy online isn't threatened by Google ... so much as it is by PEBKAC. ;-)

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bjelkeman-again
This was discussed earlier today at:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=923355>

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fnid
This makes me glad I don't use Google products!

~~~
jrockway
Yeah. I can't believe Google has the calendar entries I typed into Google
Calendar. They could show up at my next dental appointment and serve me a
targeted advertisement!

~~~
sahaj
you ought-ta work for google.

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jbyers
Great, that reminded me to remove something I apparently put on my Google
Products wishlist in 2005(?)

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imajes
Nice, except google hasn't learnt how to do internationalization yet.

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JoeAltmaier
I use(d) only Google Docs, and it tells me "Detailed information from this
service is unavailable at this time." Absolutely typical, which is why I
abandoned it for other collaborative file sharing tools. Also I hit my "share
quota" whatever that is. Typical of Google toys - not ready for a production
environment. I know its free, but I can pay for real tools that don't fail me
randomly (or as much anyway). Sigh. Didn't mean to rant. Sorry.

