6 ms·

Googling yourself now leads to personal privacy controls

70 points by smaili 10y ago

dingaling 10y ago
Thank goodness this only works when you're logged-in; I had an unsettling fear that this was going to be based on shadow profiling. "Hello Aaron Smith. Do you want to learn what we know about you? By the way your wife already knows about Sarah."
- jacobush 10y ago
  Actually, it would have been better and more honest. Then people would understand there is a dossier on them.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Well, hell, they show you that dossier right on google.com/account: recent logins (with IP address, browser UA fingerprint, etc.), paired devices, search history, etc. They even offer to export it for you (Google Takeout is one of those "makes handing out information in response to subpoenas dead-simple" codebases; I wouldn't be surprised if they built it for law enforcement, and then just thought of it as a free win to expose it to the user in question as well.) They don't include the really interesting stuff, like what Adwords CPM campaigns you've been counted as an impression or conversion for—but that's more for technical reasons than honesty ones (ads run on massive realtime OLTP pipelines that just increment counters in memory to record you; the system just doesn't have time to record a whole {campaign ID, your ID} tuple.) But all that being said, the stated idea above—showing the account-privacy offer to anyone Googling the name of X on a computer X has logged into, even if they are not presently logged into it—would be a privacy leak. (And don't get me wrong, Google cooperates with authoritarian top-down privacy violation, but that doesn't mean they don't do everything they can to prevent peer privacy violation.) Someone could go up to a computer you've used, type your name, and thereby discover what your email address is. Imagine if there was a guaranteed way to "sniff" someone's contact information off a public computer they just used, where even clearing the browser's data completely wouldn't help—that's a big target for both stalkers and social engineers.
    - Jordrok 10y ago
      I've always wondered about the extent of the info which DOESN'T make it into these kind of data dump features. Once you start thinking about it, it's incredibly obvious that the data made available to the user for export is only a tiny fraction of what actually exists internally. There are various justifications along a whole spectrum of legitimacy for not disclosing everything. Does disclosing the way your data is analyzed reveal trade secrets? What to do about data involving two or more parties (how many times x has viewed y's facebook profile, etc)? I get that there are reasons why they can't show us the content of that data, but the fact that we will never know the true extent of what is even being collected or how it will be used...that still makes me uneasy.
      - derefr 10y ago
        There are few† things you do that Google observes, that they don't observe directly, with your device/browser sending Google a request. You can get a pretty good sense of what Google's dossier on you would look like, just by setting up a proxy with an access log for every request to Google's servers. † I'm not sure what they learn about people that doesn't come from those people making requests to Google. Like, even Google Analytics makes requests to Google—and they don't have any equivalent functionality that will take server logs in place of client beacons. This almost seems like a secret/implicit principle of Google, that's somehow persisted since the "Don't Be Evil" days: only attempt to find out things about people by asking those people directly, rather than by learning it from someone else.
    - Sir_Substance 10y ago
      >Well, hell, they show you that dossier right on google.com/account You missed his point: Google assembles that dossier even if you don't have an account, but without an account you can't go to google.com/accont and see it. Of course, you can't influence it either way since google won't let you request a deletion, so it's kind of moot either way.
    - jacobush 10y ago
      I meant the dossier they keep on people without accounts. And show you that they can reliably detect who you are without you doing anything but open google.com
personjerry 10y ago
OT: I'm using Ghostery and this text is interlaced with something like 20 NDN Player Suites; That seems like bad design. Edit: To be clarify, I'm saying this suggests there may be a bug either with the site or Ghostery.
- jbob2000 10y ago
  Or, you know, a side effect of using Ghostery because it modifies the page...
mikeash 10y ago
I find it rather odd that the headline uses the word "now" and then the very first word in the article indicates that it's not yet available.
nkrisc 10y ago
I wish I could Google all of Google's account settings; I can never find where any of what I'm looking for is managed.
- groby_b 10y ago
  https://myaccount.google.com/preferences https://myaccount.google.com/preferences app-specific ones are usually under a little gear-thingy on the right-hand side.
chipperyman573 10y ago
Why has google been so (seemingly) open to wanting people to know how much they (google) knows about them (the searcher)? They recently revamped the UIs, made them easy to navigate, explained everything in detail, added extra reminders to check it out, and now this. What does google gain?
- puddintane 10y ago
  My guess would be to get users to be more open to sharing this type of information, but of course we may never know why they made that decision.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Trust. People know that Google depends on their data, so Google depends on a certain level of trust being present so that people are willing to use Google's products. It seems likely that being more transparent will lead to more trust.
  - infectoid 10y ago
    I think also it's correctness of the information. Google can only infer so much about you. But for you to curate your own data, primed by them, helps them to better target relevant information and advertisements to you. It's good and bad I guess. But definitely helps to build trust.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Sorry to be a little off topic, but I usually run Google in an incognito window because I usually don't want search results biased by my previous queries. Do other people here do that? It seems reasonable to get unbiased results. The downside of this is that searching your own search history is not as useful.
- peteretep 10y ago
  I whitelist cookies from sites, and Google is not whitelisted, which I think has the same effect
- f_allwein 10y ago
  (Disclaimer - I used to work for Google) > search results biased by my previous queries would that have to be a bad thing? I understand it prioritises search results near you area, or remembers things like whether you're more into the country or the animal when you search for [turkey]. I think concerns about the online filter bubble can be a bit overblown. We have the same thing in real life too: e.g. I like to hang out with people who share my world view rather than seek out those with opposing views.
  - krisdol 10y ago
    Personally, I hate it. I only use google when DuckDuckGo results aren't up to date yet and every time I do I'm reminded of how much I have to fight with the search engine (have to do search tools -> verbatim half the time)
  - r3bl 10y ago
    > I like to hang out with people who share my world view rather than seek out those with opposing views. Well I would like to research the arguments from both sides in order to form an informative opinion. If my search engine does not give me that but instead shows me only results I would agree with initially on the top, what's the point of using a search engine in the first place?
  - throwawaymaroon 10y ago
    this right here is evidence that it is delusion rather than malice that drives google's engineers to their intrusiveness.
wefarrell 10y ago
This doesn't work if you share a name with a celebrity :(
ender89 10y ago
That's weird, usually I check my personal privacy controls BEFORE googling myself....
King-Aaron 10y ago
I know this is a little off topic, but I just googled my own name and an article came up about another guy the same age as me with the same name being shot in his home in America. Poor bloke, but what a weird thing to come across.
- andyjdavis 10y ago
  Curious if this will ever come up at a job interview ie the interviewer jokingly saying something like "I notice you got shot but you seem fine now" indicating that they googled you.
  - afarrell 10y ago
    Referring to lethal violence against someone you just met is generally considered impolite in most contexts, so it seems unlikely, at least in the United States.

70 points by smaili 10y ago

Thank goodness this only works when you're logged-in; I had an unsettling fear that this was going to be based on shadow profiling. "Hello Aaron Smith. Do you want to learn what we know about you? By the way your wife already knows about Sarah."

jacobush 10y ago
Actually, it would have been better and more honest. Then people would understand there is a dossier on them.
- derefr 10y ago
  Well, hell, they show you that dossier right on google.com/account: recent logins (with IP address, browser UA fingerprint, etc.), paired devices, search history, etc. They even offer to export it for you (Google Takeout is one of those "makes handing out information in response to subpoenas dead-simple" codebases; I wouldn't be surprised if they built it for law enforcement, and then just thought of it as a free win to expose it to the user in question as well.) They don't include the really interesting stuff, like what Adwords CPM campaigns you've been counted as an impression or conversion for—but that's more for technical reasons than honesty ones (ads run on massive realtime OLTP pipelines that just increment counters in memory to record you; the system just doesn't have time to record a whole {campaign ID, your ID} tuple.) But all that being said, the stated idea above—showing the account-privacy offer to anyone Googling the name of X on a computer X has logged into, even if they are not presently logged into it—would be a privacy leak. (And don't get me wrong, Google cooperates with authoritarian top-down privacy violation, but that doesn't mean they don't do everything they can to prevent peer privacy violation.) Someone could go up to a computer you've used, type your name, and thereby discover what your email address is. Imagine if there was a guaranteed way to "sniff" someone's contact information off a public computer they just used, where even clearing the browser's data completely wouldn't help—that's a big target for both stalkers and social engineers.
  - Jordrok 10y ago
    I've always wondered about the extent of the info which DOESN'T make it into these kind of data dump features. Once you start thinking about it, it's incredibly obvious that the data made available to the user for export is only a tiny fraction of what actually exists internally. There are various justifications along a whole spectrum of legitimacy for not disclosing everything. Does disclosing the way your data is analyzed reveal trade secrets? What to do about data involving two or more parties (how many times x has viewed y's facebook profile, etc)? I get that there are reasons why they can't show us the content of that data, but the fact that we will never know the true extent of what is even being collected or how it will be used...that still makes me uneasy.
    - derefr 10y ago
      There are few† things you do that Google observes, that they don't observe directly, with your device/browser sending Google a request. You can get a pretty good sense of what Google's dossier on you would look like, just by setting up a proxy with an access log for every request to Google's servers. † I'm not sure what they learn about people that doesn't come from those people making requests to Google. Like, even Google Analytics makes requests to Google—and they don't have any equivalent functionality that will take server logs in place of client beacons. This almost seems like a secret/implicit principle of Google, that's somehow persisted since the "Don't Be Evil" days: only attempt to find out things about people by asking those people directly, rather than by learning it from someone else.
  - Sir_Substance 10y ago
    >Well, hell, they show you that dossier right on google.com/account You missed his point: Google assembles that dossier even if you don't have an account, but without an account you can't go to google.com/accont and see it. Of course, you can't influence it either way since google won't let you request a deletion, so it's kind of moot either way.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    I meant the dossier they keep on people without accounts. And show you that they can reliably detect who you are without you doing anything but open google.com

personjerry 10y ago

OT: I'm using Ghostery and this text is interlaced with something like 20 NDN Player Suites; That seems like bad design. Edit: To be clarify, I'm saying this suggests there may be a bug either with the site or Ghostery.

jbob2000 10y ago
Or, you know, a side effect of using Ghostery because it modifies the page...

mikeash 10y ago

I find it rather odd that the headline uses the word "now" and then the very first word in the article indicates that it's not yet available.

nkrisc 10y ago

I wish I could Google all of Google's account settings; I can never find where any of what I'm looking for is managed.

groby_b 10y ago
https://myaccount.google.com/preferences https://myaccount.google.com/preferences app-specific ones are usually under a little gear-thingy on the right-hand side.

chipperyman573 10y ago

Why has google been so (seemingly) open to wanting people to know how much they (google) knows about them (the searcher)? They recently revamped the UIs, made them easy to navigate, explained everything in detail, added extra reminders to check it out, and now this. What does google gain?

puddintane 10y ago
My guess would be to get users to be more open to sharing this type of information, but of course we may never know why they made that decision.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Trust. People know that Google depends on their data, so Google depends on a certain level of trust being present so that people are willing to use Google's products. It seems likely that being more transparent will lead to more trust.
- infectoid 10y ago
  I think also it's correctness of the information. Google can only infer so much about you. But for you to curate your own data, primed by them, helps them to better target relevant information and advertisements to you. It's good and bad I guess. But definitely helps to build trust.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Sorry to be a little off topic, but I usually run Google in an incognito window because I usually don't want search results biased by my previous queries. Do other people here do that? It seems reasonable to get unbiased results. The downside of this is that searching your own search history is not as useful.

peteretep 10y ago
I whitelist cookies from sites, and Google is not whitelisted, which I think has the same effect
f_allwein 10y ago
(Disclaimer - I used to work for Google) > search results biased by my previous queries would that have to be a bad thing? I understand it prioritises search results near you area, or remembers things like whether you're more into the country or the animal when you search for [turkey]. I think concerns about the online filter bubble can be a bit overblown. We have the same thing in real life too: e.g. I like to hang out with people who share my world view rather than seek out those with opposing views.
- krisdol 10y ago
  Personally, I hate it. I only use google when DuckDuckGo results aren't up to date yet and every time I do I'm reminded of how much I have to fight with the search engine (have to do search tools -> verbatim half the time)
- r3bl 10y ago
  > I like to hang out with people who share my world view rather than seek out those with opposing views. Well I would like to research the arguments from both sides in order to form an informative opinion. If my search engine does not give me that but instead shows me only results I would agree with initially on the top, what's the point of using a search engine in the first place?
- throwawaymaroon 10y ago
  this right here is evidence that it is delusion rather than malice that drives google's engineers to their intrusiveness.

wefarrell 10y ago

This doesn't work if you share a name with a celebrity :(

ender89 10y ago

That's weird, usually I check my personal privacy controls BEFORE googling myself....

King-Aaron 10y ago

I know this is a little off topic, but I just googled my own name and an article came up about another guy the same age as me with the same name being shot in his home in America. Poor bloke, but what a weird thing to come across.

andyjdavis 10y ago
Curious if this will ever come up at a job interview ie the interviewer jokingly saying something like "I notice you got shot but you seem fine now" indicating that they googled you.
- afarrell 10y ago
  Referring to lethal violence against someone you just met is generally considered impolite in most contexts, so it seems unlikely, at least in the United States.