Modern companies make money by knowing a lot about users and, accordingly, what they can sell to them. Not all users are happy with the fact that data about their behavior is stored on the servers of some company. Fortunately, it is possible to see what exactly Google knows about you, for example. A selection of links about what data about you is known to the largest search engine was published on the Cloud Fender blog. Some data can even be deleted.
1. Google creates a portrait of you
Google is trying to create a general “portrait” of the user: age, gender, interests. The launch of the Google+ social network and the integration of its profiles with all the company’s services, in theory, should have simplified this task even more. This data is used to show relevant ads. You can check what this data is by following this link google.com/ads/preferences.
Here you can change this data or even turn off interest-based ads in Google services such as Search, Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps.
2. Google tracks your movements
If you are the lucky owner of an Android smartphone or tablet, Google can track your movements by coordinates. You can view the entire history of your travels and trips at the link maps.google.com/locationhistory. The movement history can be downloaded as a file. Below is an example of the movements of one of the Reddit users, who was delivering pizza for a month.
3. Google keeps track of what you search for online.
Google stores your search history, as well as data about which ads you clicked on. In the settings at the top right, you can delete search history entries for a certain period of time or delete entries manually. You can view minimal analytics for your search queries, sort them by topic and type (search by words, pictures, etc.). You can explore your favorite sites and queries (judging by your search history).
4. Google knows which devices have connected to your accounts
This is a rather useful link security.google.com/settings/security/activity - by clicking on it, you can see summary information about who connected to your account and from what device. Also, there you can check IP connections, browser version and, importantly, location. Here you can find data on connections for the last month and at the moment. Similar summaries can be viewed in individual Google services. For example, Gmail has a “More Information” link at the bottom. It opens a detailed summary of who has logged into your account:
5. Apps and add-ons also access your data that Google has
You can check which applications and add-ons enjoy this privilege, for example, here security.google.com/settings/security/permissions. The link is useful because here you can revoke permissions for third-party applications to use your data.
6. All data from Google can be exported
This applies to mail data, contacts, calendar, files from Google Drive, photos, bookmarks and more. You can upload them to another site and save them in your archive (if, for example, you decide to delete your Google account). The output will be several zip files. For example, contacts can be exported in vCard format, which is supported by most email clients, including Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook.
Google collects information about all users, but you can specify which information should not be collected.
What Google knows about us
The easiest way to check what kind of incriminating evidence Google has managed to collect is to study the “My Activity” page. You can find it through the “Privacy” section in your account settings.The first tab shows in the form of blocks all actions performed under a Google account. A block can contain several records grouped by day. To view each entry individually, you can click on the block or select another tab - “Show actions”. It records each step in chronological order.
If you categorically do not like the activity for a certain period, you can delete it. To do this, click “Select a deletion option.” You can specify the date or period, as well as the product whose records should be erased. For example, you can delete only yesterday's video search.
Even more of your own activity can be found in the “Other Activities” section. There's a lot of interesting stuff here:
- Comments and ratings on YouTube.
- Interests and subscriptions.
- Call history via Google Voice or Google FI.
- News preferences.
- Orders placed through Google Play, Google Express and other services.
- Words added to Gboard.
After saving the archive on your computer (the process of creating it may take several hours), you can completely erase your activity history for the entire period or delete your Google account and never create a new one.
Stopping Google from tracking us
It is difficult to refuse to use an account. But you can prohibit the collection of information about yourself. Almost all services available for disabling can be found in the “Activity Tracking” section.Application and web history
This is the basis of the “My Actions” section. History stores information about which sites and applications you opened and what you did in them. The collected data is used, among other things, to personalize search and other services. If you turn off history, your search results may become less accurate and Google may stop recommending places of interest.
Location history
All the places you have visited with the device you have authorized are marked on the map. You can see where you visit most often and where you travel on the timeline page. If you select a specific date, you can see where you were on that day and even what type of transport you used. To remove tags that were made before you turned off history saving, click the trash can icon above the home and work address field.
Information from devices
Applications, contacts, calendar entries, connection to a PC, alarm settings - everything is tracked. You can view the actions on the “Information from devices” page. If you don't like the data, stop collecting it. As a negative consequence, Google notes possible problems with recognizing voice requests that contain names from the contact list. Not a big loss.
History of voice control
One of the funniest sections is where the phrases following “Okay Google” are stored. I don't use voice queries or audio messages because I have fingers. But it turned out that several times a month these same fingers accidentally press the microphone, and the phone records what is happening around. Sometimes it turns out very strange. Google warns that turning off history will lead to problems with personalization, and your queries will supposedly be less recognized by the application.
YouTube search and view history
YouTube remembers what videos you search for and watch, and then tries to offer relevant content. Usually it turns out badly, so you can safely disable both stories. The threats when functions are deactivated are typical: personalization will deteriorate, there will be no recommendations with interesting content.
Collecting data about users today is not difficult. Indeed, in most cases, they provide them themselves in exchange for the use of various services, be it a search engine, mailboxes or maps. One of these “pioneers” of data collection was Google. A huge number of their useful products are available to users for free. However, in return you need to agree to the collection and processing of personal data. Let's figure out what exactly Google collects and how it's useful for marketers.
“If you have something you don't want to tell everyone, maybe you shouldn't post it,” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt once said in . And it’s hard to argue with this, but Google itself begins to collect information (even the most basic) from the first seconds of “acquaintance”. To register an account, each user specifies the following:
- First Name Last Name
- Age
- Date of Birth
- Telephone
Thus, the basic information, and therefore the basic part of targeting for marketers, has already been collected.
Google talks about the following user data that it collects that ultimately influences the selection of advertisements:
- user personal information (Google account data and location);
- user actions (current search query; search history; actions in Google account; interactions with ads; sites visited; actions in mobile applications; actions on other devices under their own Google account);
- other information (time of day; information that the user provided to the advertiser. For example, the email address specified when subscribing to the newsletter).
Learn more about some of the data that influences the launch of advertising and is decisive when taking into account the advertising preferences of users.
Geolocation– an important item in the list of collected information. Google tracks and records the user's location and offers personalized advertising based on this data. This is especially true for offline businesses. For example, a user made a request for “Italian restaurant.” Google will give him a list and map of restaurants nearby in the search results. All places visited by the user are saved and even available for viewing. To do this, you need to log into your account and follow the link https://www.google.com/maps/timeline?pb Here you can see which places you've been visited by Google.
Search history. It helps in creating a list of user interests. Moreover, not only search and voice queries are saved, but also YouTube videos, articles, photos, maps and other pages that were viewed.
Information from devices. This feature saves data from phones and tablets:
- contacts;
- calendars;
- applications;
- music;
- device information (for example, battery level, Android version).
All this allows the user to receive even more accurate results and recommendations, and marketers, accordingly, set up more accurate targeting.
Application Actions. Google may track user activity in applications that use Google services. For example, the system knows which books the user is reading in a particular application, whether he is currently looking for a job (an application with vacancies is installed) or vacation tickets, etc. Of course, such information is taken into account when setting up advertising.
Options for ad personalization. The most important information for marketers is user interests. For everyone who uses its services, Google creates a personal map of interests. It consists of information that the user himself adds to his account, as well as from information from advertising partners and data from the analysis of the history of actions in Google services (such as Search and YouTube). All interest categories are similar to the categories when setting up advertising in Google Ads. Each Google user can view their own list of options for personalizing advertising and even make changes so that in the future they are shown advertisements that are truly interesting to them.
Gmail letters. All emails a user creates and receives in Gmail are also collected by Google. The number of emails received and sent is tracked. The Gmail interface itself contains blocks with advertisements. The ad serving process in Gmail is fully automated, and ads are tailored based on user activity in your Google account.
Cookies. Google Chrome uses cookies to collect data from the websites the user has visited. Some types of cookies are used later in the selection of advertising preferences. For example, they can learn and save the user's selected interface language or region. Information is also collected about what queries potential customers enter into Google Search, how they interact with Search results and displayed ads, what sections of the advertiser's site they view, etc. Session state cookies collect information about frequently visited pages and are also used to anonymously measure the effectiveness of affiliate and CPC ads.
Intent to buy or just curiosity?
However, Google is able to not only collect information about interests, but also divide it into curiosity, passion and purchase intent. He does this using various machine learning tools that can determine the depth of user interests based on behavior. Thus, he can easily identify those who intend to buy a product or those who accidentally came across a particular topic.
For example, a user read news about the results of a match during the Hockey Championship. If he has not expressed any additional interest in the topic, he can be considered someone who is not into hockey but is simply interested in the news. However, if he watched a recording of the game on YouTube, the conclusion about the user's portrait changes dramatically. And if he is also looking for hockey equipment, then all this speaks of his intention to play hockey and purchase sports goods.
If we compare the effectiveness of targeting by behavior and targeting by social demographic, the former shows much better results. After all, nothing prevents users from providing incorrect social demo information about themselves.
Targeting on YouTube also helps to catch signals from the user. For example, targeting by important life events (wedding, moving, graduation). Such events need to be quickly monitored, because at this moment a person’s consumer habits change, and he is ready to discover new interests.
Thus, the Tele2 company used the “Important Events in Life” targeting type in YouTube, the “Moving” segment to promote the new “My Tele2” tariff line. Moscow and St. Petersburg were chosen for the test, and Brand Lift Studies was launched to monitor the results. The test results exceeded expectations. An ad campaign targeting the Moving segment saw a 50% increase in brand ad recall and a 25% increase in product purchase intent. At the same time, campaigns with identical creative but targeting only demographics did not show a statistically significant increase.
Good or Evil
Data collection situations should never be viewed one-sidedly. By learning more information about the user, advertisers will be able to offer him a truly useful product. And exactly at the right time and in the right place (thanks to geolocation). Often the user doesn’t even have to search for anything. The necessary goods, places and services come to him themselves. All that remains is to choose what you like. This approach saves time and helps you find the information you need faster.
Needless to say, for marketers, the data collected by Google is a real treasure trove. Even the simplest targeting - gender, age and location - can already prevent wasteful spending of advertising budget. But more complex targeting (behavior, interests) will help to “hook” users who are most likely interested in the product being offered. Thanks to correctly selected targeting and suitable creatives, there is less misunderstanding between the user and the brand. Companies have the opportunity to study the “pains” of potential customers, understand what interests them, worries them, and offer a solution to the problem. In the end, everyone is happy: advertisers, users and Google. But such a positive experience is possible if certain conditions are met.
And these conditions are as follows: data must be collected and stored in accordance with the privacy policy and current legislation. The fear of most users is not that their passwords will be hacked, but that others will find out about their interests, problems, preferences, etc. For example, location data records all the places a person visits and can tell about his health problems (visits to clinics, hospitals, pharmacies), religion (visits to churches), and identify his work and home address.
To protect users, Google uses anonymization. They remove specific data items or substitute general values in their place. Thus, from the data obtained it is impossible to determine which specific person they relate to.
In 2018, Digital Content Next and Vanderbilt University conducted a study looking at Google's data collection. For the experiment, we took an Android smartphone with reset settings (so that no user information was associated with the device). A new account was also created so that Google would not know anything about the user in advance. The researcher then went about his normal day using the mobile phone associated with the new Google account. Then all data obtained over 12 hours was analyzed.
Google knows how old you are, what languages you speak, what interests or hobbies you have, where you have been and where you would like to go. We will help you figure out where your privacy on the Internet begins and ends.
How do they do it
If you don't have such an account, you may have a Gmail account. Don't worry, the company does not review attached documents. But the topics, headings and what is written “in the body” of the letter are tracked. This is used not only to quickly search for letters using keywords in the title, but also for other purposes.
Speaking of searching. If you don’t have a Google account and email, then you’ve probably used the search engine of the same name. And everything that you entered there, of course, is recorded.
The same applies to users using a browser. All information from the omnibox does not disappear without a trace. Clear your browser history only for yourself.
Add to this Google Analytics - a program that many web developers install in order to keep statistics of visits and user actions.
Check if the age, interests, etc. match. There you can also prohibit the collection of some of your data. The history of requests and visits is located. You can remove it if you wish.
The history of your movements when using GoogleMaps is contained.
And the list of all sites and applications in which you registered and logged in through your Google account is contained.
A bit of conspiracy theory
Some researchers believe there's more to all this than just collecting data for marketing. Google is even called the new “Big Brother” - the one that “watches over you.”
The reason for such conclusions was the release of Google Glass - an innovative gadget in the form of glasses, capable, among other things, of transmitting information via the Internet about where you are and with whom.
” presents in a visual form all the data that the search giant collects about us. With its help, you can easily find out what you are looking for on the Internet, what sites you visit, what videos you watch, what music you listen to, where you go and what programs you run on your smartphone. In general, almost any information you can imagine.
For ease of viewing, there are two display options: in chronological order and in the form of thematic blocks. You can also filter by date or information type to display only the records that interest you.
The My Actions site allows you not only to view the collected information, but also to delete some entries. To do this, you need to find the “Select” item in the menu on the top panel and check the boxes for unnecessary entries. There is also a cleaning function related to a specific day or a specific application.
Yes, we all know, of course, that Google collects information about us. But when I saw with my own eyes how much this company actually knew about me, I felt somehow uneasy.
What are your feelings? Or is everything as usual: “Let them spy, I’m not doing anything wrong”?
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