How Google stores the data it collects. Google spies and eavesdrops on you, and then sells this information

Collecting user data allowed Google to announce several of its new developments at one of its annual developer conferences: an assistant that can make appointments by phone and customize suggestions on maps Google function, which will complete sentences for you.

The development of such technologies was largely possible thanks to massive data collection. Google services collect data from billions of users every day. This is one of the conditions of use free services. Many people don't even think about it. But the one who owns the information owns the world.

Google has seven products, each with at least 1 billion monthly active users, and they can't operate without access to user data. According to a Morning Consult survey, this has helped make Google one of the most famous brands in the world.

The well-known Cambridge Analytica scandal led to stricter laws on the storage of personal data, and the company at the center of the scandal was declared bankrupt.

Google is on thin ice

Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie says:

"Search as well as mobile devices equipped Google Play perfectly understand their user. This mutual understanding is achieved through the collection and storage of your personal data.

Facebook had a stated policy for the last three years that most of us thought was acceptable until Cambridge Analytica came to light."

Where does the data come from?

The more Google products you use, the more data Google can collect about you. Whether it's Gmail, Android smartphone operating system, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Maps and of course Google Search— the company collects gigabytes of data about you.

Google offers free access to its services, showing you targeted ads that generated $31.2 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2018 alone.

The company's data collection practices also include email scanning to extract data keywords for use in other products and Google services and to improve its capabilities machine learning. This information was confirmed by Google spokesman Aaron Stein.

“We can analyze [email] content to tailor search results to better detect spam and malware,” he added.

But that is not all. Google says it is also using some of its data sets to "help build the next generation of next-generation artificial intelligence solutions." On Tuesday, Google released "Smart Replies," which uses artificial intelligence to help users complete sentences.

Consultant for information technology Dylan Curran recently downloaded everything he had on Facebook and ended up with a 600 MB file. A similar file with personal data from Google was 5.5 gigabytes, which is nine times larger!

“This is one of the craziest things in the modern era, we would never allow the government or corporation to put cameras or microphones in our homes or track location on us, but we went ahead and did it ourselves because... I want to watch videos of cute cats and dogs,” Curran wrote.

What does Google guarantee?

The Company has established various restrictions on the use of this data. The company does not sell your personal information, anonymizes user data after 18 months, and encourages users to delete some or all of the personal data collected. Innovations like these make it harder for marketers trying to figure out your beliefs, sexual interests, or personal struggles.

However, this does not prevent the company from selling advertising itself, the reach of which can be narrowed to the user's zip code. When combined with a sufficient number of other categories of interests and user behavior, it is easier for Google advertisers to identify target audiences, and therefore create the most successful advertising campaigns.

What can you do about it?

Users can see and limit the data collected by Google by changing their advertising preferences.

Internet giant offers customizable controls to opt out of ad file tracking Google cookies, and limit whether you show targeted ads based on your interest groups and categories. You can also view and delete a lot of personal tracking data about yourself, including all your search history and any geolocation data that may have tracked your every physical move if you're signed into Google services on your phone.

“We provide users with controls to delete individual items, services, or their entire account,” Stein told Google. “When a user decides to delete data, we go through a process over time to safely and completely remove them from our systems, including backups. We store some data with a user's Google account, such as when and how they use certain features, for as long as Account will not be deleted."

He does not collect information for sale or, especially, in the interests of some universal conspiracy.

Everything is much more prosaic: personal information helps determine the tastes and habits of users. To do this, Google stores data about gender, age, interests, as well as user search queries, including voice ones.

For example, after analyzing the requests of an individual person, search system will offer goods or services related to the object of previous requests. For example, if a user was looking for where to buy a smartphone, then contextual advertising will offer accessories for this phone model.

Another subject of controversy is the collection of information about the location of its clients by the “good corporation,” which forces especially nervous ones to constantly turn off the transmission of geodata.

Google collects data on the movement of users using their smartphones: when using, for example, the Google Maps service, the owner of the device gives out his location. The time during which a particular user was in a certain place, and even the speed of movement are recorded.

Thanks to this information, the search engine will return places that provide certain services closest to the user, again consistent with his interests.

Not everyone will like the fact that a huge transnational corporation has so much of their personal data. Of course, it is possible to disable some of the “tracking” services, but most are unlikely to give up, for example, watching videos on YouTube just so that Google does not recognize the user’s preferences.

One example of users outraged by the “violation of confidentiality” was Anton Burkov, who filed a lawsuit against Google because the corporation, in his opinion, read his personal correspondence. Burkov demanded 50 thousand rubles from the company. for moral damage. decided to recover the entire amount from the defendant, but Google's lawyers appealed the court's decision. As a result, the Moscow City Court rejected the company’s claim, obliging Google to pay 50 thousand rubles. However, the company can still appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

However, Google is far from the only company that accumulates the personal data of its customers.

Companies that “monitor” the users of their services also include , which recently came under a storm of criticism due to the huge amount of data collected latest version operating system from Microsoft - Windows 10.

How to approach the collection of data by organizations whose services are used by tens of millions of people every day is an open question. On the one hand, in the event of a software failure or hacking of data storages by hackers, the scale of the “drain” personal information will be simply catastrophic: the confidential data of millions of people will become public knowledge, and the corporation that allowed the leak will be overwhelmed with lawsuits from outraged users. Of course, every company does everything possible to prevent such incidents.

On the other hand, the collection of personal data takes the quality of the services offered to a new level. This practice allows the average user to “surf” the Internet with much greater comfort, helps to separate the “wheat from the chaff” and generally speeds up the search for information.

It is worth noting that the privacy policy of each corporation that collects certain data about its clients specifies all the information that the user allows to be stored when confirming the conditions; If such an agreement seems unacceptable, there is always the opportunity to reject the terms of use.

An example of unauthorized access to users’ personal information is the case of the social network Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg's company experimented with the emotional state of users

In 2014, the company conducted an experiment to influence people's emotional state by filtering positive and negative posts in the feed without notifying its users.

This incident had a negative impact on the image of the corporation itself: the company had to create an internal commission on ethical and legal issues of experiments, and also retrained personnel in this area.

In general, we can say that there is nothing in the collection of personal data that could harm the average user: for the most part, this process is carried out to improve the quality of the services provided. So what about " Big Brother“It’s too early to say.

Few users think about online security and privacy. Very often we go online and log in personal accounts With various devices— from smartphones and computers that are accessible to other users. In addition, modern sites and web services collect a large number of statistics and user data. Google is no exception. In fact, Google knows even more about you than you might imagine. So, what's wrong interesting Google knows about us, the users?

Google has developed quite a lot of services that are used by more than 1 billion people around the world. This is a search engine (google), mail (gmail), Google Earth ( Google Earth), maps (Google Maps), YouTube and others. Each of these services collects data about users that is used for effective online advertising and for other purposes known only to Google.

Sites that share user data with Google

Google uses its own services in which users indicate up-to-date information About Me. In this case, you agree that the data specified when registering accounts is real, and also give your consent to the processing of personal data by Google. I doubt that more than 1% of users from the CIS countries read the entire terms of the user agreement or public offer before clicking “Agree” and starting to use the service or program.

In addition, the company collects numerous technical data and parameters related to software And technical characteristics user devices (computer, mobile phone, from which you logged into Google services).

Which sites share user data with Google?

There are not that many sites that send user data to Google. But the specificity of the information Google receives allows us to assess the scale of “surveillance” of users.

Google+ Profile

A personal profile on Google+ is similar to pages on others. in social networks. You fill in the basic data - your age, gender, main interests (you agree to the processing of this data by Google). This data is taken into account when selecting relevant advertisements that will be shown to you on the pages of partner sites using Google.Adwords. Detailed user information is available at www.google.com/ads/preferences/

User location and movement history

If you are using an Android smartphone, it has the ability and ability to send your current coordinates and speed to Google. In addition, some applications require permission to send the coordinates of the user's device in order to function correctly. You've probably noticed that when you find yourself in a certain location, a notification appears on your smartphone about the possibility of uploading photos and descriptions for this place. You can view the history of your movements and display it in the file maps.google.com/locationhistory

Google search history

Google constantly monitors queries that the user asks the search engine, especially if the user is logged in to one of Google’s services. In this case, sent requests are encrypted and hidden from built-in statistics systems. The user's reaction to pop-up advertising and any user behavior with search results are also monitored and controlled. This is used to improve search algorithms, select more relevant (relevant) advertising history.google.com

Account login devices

Google keeps records of devices, IP addresses, locations, methods of accessing its services and accounts Google users. The user can look at the corresponding lists and find out whether anyone else is using his Google accounts and services security.google.com/settings/security/activity

List of apps that have access to your Google data

This list shows apps that can handle Google users' personal data. The user can see what rights and capabilities these programs have, and also change the level of access to personal data security.google.com/settings/security/permissions

Export Google user data

Users of Google services have the ability to export or archive their personal data from google accounts. Information from the following applications and services is available for export: bookmarks, mail, contacts, calendar, files from Drive, videos from YouTube, picasa photos, etc. www.google.com/takeout

Google does not hide the fact that it will know, if not everything, then a lot about its users. Even when you created your account, you were warned that they would track your search history, YouTube views, audio information, purchases, contacts, and call data. But all this is spelled out in a multi-page agreement, which not everyone can read to the end.

Google explains that all this is done in order to adapt to users and make products more convenient. For example, provide customized offers, content or applications. But most importantly, the information is used to select the most tailored advertising for you.

Why Google Surveillance is Dangerous

One of the best ways to limit the data Google collects by default is because your personal information could fall into the wrong hands. And not only if someone hacks your account.

Your information may be leaked to the Internet. It's your fault

So, in July, the Yandex search engine indexed files from the Google Docs service that were not protected by privacy settings. , recorded in Google Docs files. The first thing users found through Yandex search was passwords. IN open access turned out to be passwords to personal and work accounts on social networks, to e-mail and other services. In addition, the documents revealed numbers electronic wallets. However, all password-protected documents did not appear in the search results. The leak occurred due to the negligence of the users themselves.

Your information may be passed on to strangers. Completely legal

The user agreement clearly states who Google can share your confidential information with:

• To private companies, if you have given your consent. Example from Google: “If you are with using Google Home contacted the driver call service, we will provide your address to this service only with your permission.”
• Google affiliates and other trusted companies and individuals to process on Google's behalf.
• Law enforcement agencies, security forces, FSB.
• Publishers, advertisers, developers. Example from Google: “We provide this information so that users can study trends in the use of our services. We also allow select partners to collect information from your browser or device through their own cookies and other technologies and use it to display advertising and evaluate its effectiveness.”

Why does Google track you?

The task of Google, like any commercial structure in this world, is to make money. One way is to sell advertising more effectively.

To do this, the service collects a huge amount of information about everything. After all, you register and use the product for free, but for every free product you have to pay, one way or another.

Excerpt from Google's user agreement:

How to get rid of Google tracking If you are simply fed up with Google advertising that offers you products that match your requests (you never know what and when you were looking for and don’t want to advertise it), then you can disable personalization.

For this . But this does not mean that Google will stop collecting information on you. It will just be less of a bother. However, any user can block Google

not only offer advertising, but also collect information. So that Google stops tracking completely and completely

(at least according to the parameters that are officially spoken about), it’s just that it’s now enabled by default.

If you are ready to provide information about your preferences to YouTube, but do not want to be intercepted, then the following instructions are for you:

To access your personal file, you need to log into your account, Here are the settings for search queries

and pages viewed; places you have visited; information from devices; voice requests and commands; the video you searched for and watched on YouTube. All data from your phone's microphone is stored.