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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 incredibl
by 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 agoThere 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.