Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

[Hermit-The-Prog]

The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look

By Dylan Curran Wed 28 Mar 2018

Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google knows where you’ve been

[...]

Google knows everything you’ve ever searched – and deleted

[...]

Google knows all the apps you use

[...]

Google has all of your YouTube history

[...]

The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone’s Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve taken on your phone, the businesses you’ve bought from, the products you’ve bought through Google …

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you’ve purchased, the Google groups you’re in, the websites you’ve created, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day …

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy

[The article continues with similar sub-headings for Facebook. Each shows a link by which you can check or download your own data. These corporate tracking systems are not your friend.]

[Canoe52]

1. scary, very scary...

[procon]

2. Lets give a big shout out to all the Republicans who are opposed to regulations!

Reclassify these arogant telecom companies as public utilities and put an end to the invasion of privacy and stop the reselling of our personal data to enrich those who profit off of unwitting citizens.

[Mr.Bill]

3. If you are not paying for the product,

you are the product.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Is this because you have a Google account?

or does it apply to everyone?

[Honeycombe8]

6. If you're using Google's apps.

I think you have to create an account to use any of its apps.

But any time you enter someone else's cyber world, they will have a record of everything that is done in its world. If you put a naked pic of yourself in Google world, Google gets it. Just like if you come into my house with a handful of pics and store them in my house, I have a record of that, even when you come back and remove them.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Google account and cookies.

I have both but I almost never log in and surf with cookies turned off and deleted unless I absolutely have to use them somewhere. I explicitly allow DU cookies. I explicitly block Google cookies.

I also have my browser set to "Do Not Track".

Note that companies have agreements to share cookies among each other so that Google may also be getting cookies from other big players.

[Honeycombe8]

5. I figured Google would have that data. After all, the internet is public, and if you're in GOOGLE's

if you're in Google's house, Google controls it. Amazon controls ITS world. Facebook has a record of its world. And so on.

People didn't know this?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. No. The internet is NOT inherently public. It is public unless you opt-out.

Basically you have to opt-out of being public in many ways.

One way internet is NOT public is the https secure protocol sites like DU use so that packets can't be sniffed passing through intermediate servers.

[Honeycombe8]

11. It's a data highway. It's public. There are certain sites....

where you can enter someone's "house," and they will lock that securely. But then, you are in someone else's house, even when it's secure.

It's not your private world. It's public. People should understand that.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. You are confusing the houses with the highway and not understanding the technology.

The vehicles on the highway are private, not public; they are analogous to the packets in the optical fiber. Using the HTTPS protocol like DU does makes the packets opaque. It's like a box truck. Nobody sees the packages.

The "houses" you speak of are ALL PRIVATE, not public. The data they keep is not displayed in the public square. They are not built of glass. They are opaque to the outside world.

The reason you think they are public is because you have agreed to some contracts ( "Terms of Use" ) that allows the companies to share (sell) some of the data to each other. But only because YOU have AGREED to it.

The only other way that data is shared is illegally in violation of privacy rules or in violation of those agreements. For example where Facebook has collected more data than the users authorized or data they were tricked into giving thinking it would be used for research purposes.

The analogy there would be a peeping tom recording video through a gap in curtains of you engaging in sexual intercourse and selling it to a magazine to publish.

That would be illegal. You did not sign a model release (a form of contract).

Even when you go to somebody else's house you do not give up your rights. They can't use interior surveillance cameras and sell the video without your permission.

[askyagerz]

9. Its time to write my fake obituary and start over with a social media alias

[democratisphere]

28. Reincarnation. What a great idea for Easter!

Let me know how you make out with the resurrection.

[IronLionZion]

10. There are many smug DUers who have no idea how much these companies have on them

and naively believe they are safe by simply not using Facebook. It's so disappointing

Ignorance is bliss. Truth is unsettling.

[Honeycombe8]

13. There's nothing really in my internet history that's a big secret.

I remember when I got my first computer in 1995 and learned about cookies. I was horrified that you couldn't open some sites (enter those "houses" ) unless you granted cookies. But that's what some sites required, so if you wanted to use those sites, you had to give them those rights.

It was after that point that I realized that the internet is not a private place. It's like driving on the highway. Your laptop is your car, but you're driving on a highway built and maintained by others. There may be security cameras in some places. You can stop along the way and visit some "houses." Some of those "houses" may be locked (secured) after you enter. So those are secure. But even those are not private. That's not your home. That's someone else's "house." The owner of that house will have information on you, if he wants it. You leave your imprint there when you enter.

I have a Google account. I am fully aware that Google tracks me in its apps, whatever I do, whichever app I use. It's account system is made to interact that way. I am positive that Google has all sorts of information on me.

Just look at what some sites like Spokeo and other people identifying sites have on you. They'll know your full name, your relatives, your DOB, sometimes part of your Social Security number, your various addresses going back some years, etc.

Maybe I'm not surprised because I used to subscribe to and use information databases to locate people. The amount of information I could get on a person would surprise you. And that's because it's all there on the internet somewhere, in various databases.

[IronLionZion]

14. Aggregation and analysis is where things get really insightful

as a way to target you for advertising and of course political memes and fake news designed to influence people's votes. They have ways of amplifying and manipulating people's emotions based on a person's habits and preferences.

I see a ridiculous amount of lunacy on the conservative side. Their mentality is especially susceptible to fear and anger.

I'm not surprised that they collect all this info. As a technical savvy professional I've always been aware of the capabilities. Just very disappointed and what sort of organizations they sell it to and what they do with it.

[Honeycombe8]

22. Don't we already get that with advertising?

I have ads following me around everywhere, based on what I've bought online recently or what I've been looking at (the cookies tell them). For some reason they think that because I bought a rug at Christmas, I'm going to want to buy all sorts of rugs from different places...for the foreseeable future! LOL.

[kentuck]

12. Holy Crapanapolis!!

[HockeyMom]

15. My husband not a FB Member

yet I get all pop ads on FB for things HE has searched for. Ok, I admit it is nice for me to keep taps on HIM. lol

[Igel]

20. FB probably sees cookies left on your hard drive.

n/t

[Honeycombe8]

23. Yes, the cookies. That's not a FB thing. That's a web thing.

I have ads for things following me around, no matter what site I go on. Those ads are from cookies from sites I visited or bought from. The same or similar ads may appear on FB or here on DU or whatever.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

25. tracking is not just by cookies

For example, that facebook "like" clicky that appears all over the web.

Firefox Add-On Protects You From Facebook Tracking
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/266574-firefox-add-protects-facebook-tracking


Some basic info on cookies:

Get Smart On the Web
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/teach/smarton/tracking/

[Duppers]

17. Yawn. Folks, if you've not realized this before...

you've not been informed. Want your privacy? Stay offline >.<

I've a Google Home thingie that's recording everything I say in my kitchen. Guess I'm in deep dodo. Yawn. 😜

[OldHippieChick]

18. There are times - very few -

when it is an advantage to be an old fart. I never check out You Tube and I have no apps. Wouldn't know what to do w/ one if I had one.

[Sophia4]

19. I'm 74, and I have been married to my dear husband for 54 years.

One day, the name of an old college boyfriend popped into my head for utterly no reason so I googled the name and found nothing. Of course, I told my husband what I was doing.

Some time later, my husband and I went to the house of another friend we had known years earlier in college for dinner. At the table with us was a man we had never met who asked me about the old boyfriend I had googled. It was so odd. I could not believe that experience. What it was about, why he was there, why he asked me about this old boyfriend from many, many years earlier, I do not know.

But that experience taught me that you never know who is getting your information from the internet. Such a strange lesson.

I wonder what my old boyfriend was up to. Must have been something interesting. What a puzzle. I'll never know.

[Beartracks]

26. Wait - Did he just ask about the old boyfriend, or...

... did he ask about "the old boyfriend that you googled"???

=========

[Sophia4]

30. the old boyfriend that I googled.

It was so strange. I couldn't believe it. My husband couldn't either.

[torius]

31. Weird! One time

I thought of a decades-ago ex-boyfriend for the first time in several years (or rather wondered about him enough to Google him). We had not been in touch for years and years. The moment I Googled him, I received an email(I use Yahoo mail) from him, saying he was just thinking about me.

[Sophia4]

32. I heard from a perfect stranger and not that old boyfriend.

I just googled him because I thought of him. Don't know why in the world that stranger showed up. Goes to show that our Googles are observed.

[Igel]

21. I've known since '85 or '96 that a lot of into is out there.

But for Google, it only shows what I've done when logged in and using Chrome.

You can tell that I like science and music, from Bakfark to Seve MIller and more recent rock, and that I like looking at news stories.

Otherwise, not so much. I only log in on my work computer, and that's pretty clean. I know that anything I do on that computer could be monitored at any time by any number of people higher up in the org chart.

[Honeycombe8]

24. Me, too. When I 1st learned about cookies on '95, I realized what was what.

I realized that my info and searching was being tracked. Not to the level we see now, but I knew that at some level, all that info is out there.

I delete certain cookies. Some I keep because they're useful (for my bill paying sites and such...thats how my info is saved on that site).

Our motor vehicle info is online, our driving record, where we bank, where we live, where we used to live, our relatives, our neighbors....all that info is in the internet somewhere.

[SonofDonald]

27. I don't use google and haven't for years

I use bing, I've never had a google account anyway, I have an I-phone and in five years have never downloaded an app from the apple store and there isn't song #1 on my phone, I don't even have an account there.

I deleted everything from my Fbook page around two years ago but still have relatives as friends, that's it.

The only phone number connected to me on the net was from my first cellphone from about 15 years ago, that was 3-4 numbers ago.

But somebody out there has info on me, I know it.

What good it will do them is unknown.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

29. duckduckgo

Bing tracks searches with redirects, just like Google and Yahoo.

It's not perfect, but it works:
https://duckduckgo.com

[Blue_Tires]

33. But Snowden said private and corporate data collection was nothing to worry about!

[Still Blue in PDX]

34. My mom always said, "Don't do anything you wouldn't want on the front page of the newspaper."

I figure that's a good philosophy to follow when using the internet. My browsing history is pretty boring.