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> All they do is repackage mass corporate surveillance into convenient, free, trendy applications that suck up all your data. Your private data helps Google dom

> All they do is repackage mass corporate surveillance into convenient, free, trendy applications that suck up all your data. Your private data helps Google dominate the online advertising market. Google has what I think are the most transparent and user friendly controls for visualizing what personal data is collected, and disabling it (most often per product, for ex. disable location history and YouTube viewing history, but enable personalized ads). - For most of the products mentioned in the blogpost (YouTube, Search, ...), people can just go to MyActivity [0] and delete any data they want to. They can also disable data collection here. [1] - Emails received in Gmail are no longer used for advertisement in other Google products, only used for Gmail ads, and features like searching your emails, spam prevention, parsing orders/flights/etc. to display them in the app. Also note that emails received in GSuite ("enterprise Gmail") were never parsed for these purposes. [2] [0] https://myactivity.google.com/ https://myactivity.google.com/ [1] https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html Important disclaimer: I work at Google [but only voicing my own opinions, as it goes], and only working there because I realize they are doing all they can to respect user privacy.

shawn 8y ago
Google has what I think is the most transparent and user friendly controls for visualizing what personal data is collected, and disabling it (most often per product, for ex. disable location history and YouTube viewing history, but enable personalized ads). I don't think this stops Google from collecting your viewing history. If it did, Youtube recommendations wouldn't work at all, because they would know nothing about what I like or don't like. But I'm pretty sure recommendations work regardless of your settings -- meaning you're being tracked. I happen to like the recommendations, so I don't mind this. But it's a hard problem.
- halflings 8y ago
  The second link I posted allows you to explicitly disable search and viewing history on YouTube, which also disables recommendations (at least those based on your profile; you will still get recommendations after watching a specific video).
  - shawn 8y ago
    Fair enough, though that would require me to sign in. Does that actually prevent the data from being stored on Google's servers? I'd like to believe that the data isn't being vacuumed up regardless of what the user says, so if you're willing to vouch for it then that would mean a lot.
    - 0xmaverick 8y ago
      How can you ever trust anyone like that ? Unless, you see the line of code that is deleting the data ?. It's kind of unfair when people on HN take Apple by their word and for Google "oh is it really deleted though" ?
      - shawn 8y ago
        If a current employee is willing to vouch for it, that carries some weight. It's a useful data point.
      - kerberos84 8y ago
        Because google makes its revenue from user data.
        0xmaverick 8y ago
        Do you have a better solution ?. No one will use the products if it costs some non-trivial amount. And no this thread doesn't represent the billions of non-US non-rich people that use Google.
- jgtrosh 8y ago
  When logged in I have history disabled, and YouTube being kind of usable, with a lot of stupid content promoted, but at least not too much weird fixation on things I watched 5 years ago. When logged out I get the full fixation experience where I half the suggestions are aggravatingly repetitive personalized suggestions.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
That's an understandable point of view because if you perceived Google the way many of us do, it would be impossible or at least very difficult for you to work for them without strong emotional struggle. You see, the point is that we, the users, helped to create a mammoth that has an enormous pile of sometimes very intimate data on almost anyone. This in itself is dangerous, regardless of what they do with this data - whether they share it with advertisers and other third parties, the government, NSA etc. or not. Also, the world changes fast. Owners change, governments change. Who is to blame when things end up badly? We are, because we got lured by free unlimited spam-free mailbox, free browser, cheap phone, free analytics, accurate search engine. We like these so much that we gave up critical thinking for a while. But the society as a whole is slowly waking up, hence articles like these (which is quite lacking on several points BTW.)
MVf4l 8y ago
1. Please ask BEFORE you collect. 2. You can't expect every user to know they are logged, or how it's affecting the user, or know how to disable/delete it, can you? 3. How can I verify that you did delete the data about me instead of just hiding from me for viewing it? Alphabet is not belong to public sector. So the simple answer is I can't. If you want me to trust you, don't use opt-out as default. 4. I'm sure you can tell the differences between those alternatives and Google products. 5. It's not that hard to respect some one's data. First, do not collect it! Second, if you have to collect it, tell the owner why! Third, delete it completely while requested. 6. Aggregated data collection and use without permissions adds potential risks to the society. (Cambridge Analytica) Edit: And you guys are doing deep learning, that's gonna consume lot's of data. Duplex for example, you use anonymous phone call data to train it. The question is, where does that data even come from? I'd blacklist whoever collected the data, even it's collected anonymously.
- antpls 8y ago
  > 6. Aggregated data collection and use without permissions adds potential risks to the society. (Cambridge Analytica) Everything adds "potential risks". When you talk about risk, you have to give estimates of both the frequency and the criticity, and then compare to the potential benefits. Only then you have all the pieces to take an informed decision, according to your preferences.
  - 4684499 8y ago
    How do you define benefits? Sacrifice one's privacy without his permission to make ten of others' life easier, would you call it beneficial? If so, let's rob the wealthy to aid the poor. They can reduce the risks to a certain level if users were told how they are going to use the data and why before using it. Are they going to do that? No, because that increases the cost, which means less profit, which means shareholders won't agree. So there comes law.
    - antpls 8y ago
      My point was : it is easy to throw a general sentence to make things look obvious and simple, but it doesn't really help the conversation. At some point, claims must be backed by data and methods.
antpls 8y ago
I don't work at Google, I live in Europe and I agree with you. So far, we didn't heard of any breach in any Google product, and the history of the different products can effectively be turned off. I remember years ago, when I started to care about data collected about me, Google was one of the first company allowing you to download a part of your data. We can see the emphasize about security on the evolution of Android APIs too (encrypted enclaves, key storages, for example). Google also contributes to open AI and ML researches. My only consumer concern is about monopoly, not about data collected on me.
- gregknicholson 8y ago
  > So far, we didn't heard of any breach in any Google product A breach would be a security issue, not a privacy issue. A security issue is where a third party accesses your data stored at Google without Google's permission. A privacy issue is where a third party accesses your data stored at Google with Google's permission but without your permission.
  - bdhess 8y ago
    I don’t think those definitions are at all canonical, but are you actually suggesting that Google may have a “privacy issue” per your definition? Even if you assume they’re a bad actor, it’s hard to imagine a rationale for them to let a third party have a go at the data.
    - gregknicholson 8y ago
      > are you actually suggesting that Google may have a “privacy issue” per your definition? Until the GDPR started being enforced, I think it was common practice to collect and sell data without the user's full knowledge and consent. It's a huge change in mindset having to know and explain what they're doing. Even when not signed in, YouTube remembers the sort of video you've watched and suggests similar ones; I didn't explicitly consent to this, and they didn't tell me clearly what data they were collecting. I'm a former Gmail user; I didn't explicitly consent to Google analysing the contents of my email messages; I think a typical person would not expect that. If something “feels creepy”, it's probably a privacy breach. Maybe Google think they have the user's permission. It may be an honest misunderstanding. I'm not saying they're malicious; but I think they have very little incentive to really care about privacy, because their users don't demand it. Third parties will pay for user data. Also, I think you should be able to choose who you trust. You shouldn't be obliged to trust Google (or Microsoft or whoever); I would see that as a monopoly.
fifnir 8y ago
The unavoidable suggested answers in gmail make my skin crawl. I dont want it and i dont want to be reminded that you can read my emails despite my consent for it I guess it's a good reminder that i need to change services
- halflings 8y ago
  How can an email service work without "reading" your email? Emails need to be indexed to be searcheable etc.
  - kerberos84 8y ago
    It does not need to read the body of email in order to work. It can index just the header(to, date, subject) or you can use a program on your computer locally to keep your emails and index&search them.
    - halflings 8y ago
      > It does not need to read the body of email in order to work. It can index just the header(to, date, subject) The header is still personal data. Using the header but avoiding the body does not make much sense. Again, "reading" emails seems to be an arbitrary distinction. Your emails are stored and served to you, so they are read by HTTP servers, by your browser, by many things. The real issue is the use that is made of those readers: an index that allows you to search your emails more efficiently does not seem to be nefarious, but I definitely agree that other nefarious uses are possible (say some company that would use emails to target people in debt or something like that), just not the case with Gmail. > You can use a program on your computer locally to keep your emails and index&search them. Right, but then it's not Gmail anymore, that's just an IMAP mail server with Thunderbird. Gmail started as a smart webmail; being able to quickly search your emails from anywhere, without a desktop client, without fetching thousands of emails before you could perform a search.
x2f10 8y ago
How do I view the data Google has collected on me if I do not have a Google account?

shawn 8y ago

Google has what I think is the most transparent and user friendly controls for visualizing what personal data is collected, and disabling it (most often per product, for ex. disable location history and YouTube viewing history, but enable personalized ads). I don't think this stops Google from collecting your viewing history. If it did, Youtube recommendations wouldn't work at all, because they would know nothing about what I like or don't like. But I'm pretty sure recommendations work regardless of your settings -- meaning you're being tracked. I happen to like the recommendations, so I don't mind this. But it's a hard problem.

halflings 8y ago
The second link I posted allows you to explicitly disable search and viewing history on YouTube, which also disables recommendations (at least those based on your profile; you will still get recommendations after watching a specific video).
- shawn 8y ago
  Fair enough, though that would require me to sign in. Does that actually prevent the data from being stored on Google's servers? I'd like to believe that the data isn't being vacuumed up regardless of what the user says, so if you're willing to vouch for it then that would mean a lot.
  - 0xmaverick 8y ago
    How can you ever trust anyone like that ? Unless, you see the line of code that is deleting the data ?. It's kind of unfair when people on HN take Apple by their word and for Google "oh is it really deleted though" ?
    - shawn 8y ago
      If a current employee is willing to vouch for it, that carries some weight. It's a useful data point.
    - kerberos84 8y ago
      Because google makes its revenue from user data.
      - 0xmaverick 8y ago
        Do you have a better solution ?. No one will use the products if it costs some non-trivial amount. And no this thread doesn't represent the billions of non-US non-rich people that use Google.
jgtrosh 8y ago
When logged in I have history disabled, and YouTube being kind of usable, with a lot of stupid content promoted, but at least not too much weird fixation on things I watched 5 years ago. When logged out I get the full fixation experience where I half the suggestions are aggravatingly repetitive personalized suggestions.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

That's an understandable point of view because if you perceived Google the way many of us do, it would be impossible or at least very difficult for you to work for them without strong emotional struggle. You see, the point is that we, the users, helped to create a mammoth that has an enormous pile of sometimes very intimate data on almost anyone. This in itself is dangerous, regardless of what they do with this data - whether they share it with advertisers and other third parties, the government, NSA etc. or not. Also, the world changes fast. Owners change, governments change. Who is to blame when things end up badly? We are, because we got lured by free unlimited spam-free mailbox, free browser, cheap phone, free analytics, accurate search engine. We like these so much that we gave up critical thinking for a while. But the society as a whole is slowly waking up, hence articles like these (which is quite lacking on several points BTW.)

MVf4l 8y ago

1. Please ask BEFORE you collect. 2. You can't expect every user to know they are logged, or how it's affecting the user, or know how to disable/delete it, can you? 3. How can I verify that you did delete the data about me instead of just hiding from me for viewing it? Alphabet is not belong to public sector. So the simple answer is I can't. If you want me to trust you, don't use opt-out as default. 4. I'm sure you can tell the differences between those alternatives and Google products. 5. It's not that hard to respect some one's data. First, do not collect it! Second, if you have to collect it, tell the owner why! Third, delete it completely while requested. 6. Aggregated data collection and use without permissions adds potential risks to the society. (Cambridge Analytica) Edit: And you guys are doing deep learning, that's gonna consume lot's of data. Duplex for example, you use anonymous phone call data to train it. The question is, where does that data even come from? I'd blacklist whoever collected the data, even it's collected anonymously.

antpls 8y ago
> 6. Aggregated data collection and use without permissions adds potential risks to the society. (Cambridge Analytica) Everything adds "potential risks". When you talk about risk, you have to give estimates of both the frequency and the criticity, and then compare to the potential benefits. Only then you have all the pieces to take an informed decision, according to your preferences.
- 4684499 8y ago
  How do you define benefits? Sacrifice one's privacy without his permission to make ten of others' life easier, would you call it beneficial? If so, let's rob the wealthy to aid the poor. They can reduce the risks to a certain level if users were told how they are going to use the data and why before using it. Are they going to do that? No, because that increases the cost, which means less profit, which means shareholders won't agree. So there comes law.
  - antpls 8y ago
    My point was : it is easy to throw a general sentence to make things look obvious and simple, but it doesn't really help the conversation. At some point, claims must be backed by data and methods.

antpls 8y ago

I don't work at Google, I live in Europe and I agree with you. So far, we didn't heard of any breach in any Google product, and the history of the different products can effectively be turned off. I remember years ago, when I started to care about data collected about me, Google was one of the first company allowing you to download a part of your data. We can see the emphasize about security on the evolution of Android APIs too (encrypted enclaves, key storages, for example). Google also contributes to open AI and ML researches. My only consumer concern is about monopoly, not about data collected on me.

gregknicholson 8y ago
> So far, we didn't heard of any breach in any Google product A breach would be a security issue, not a privacy issue. A security issue is where a third party accesses your data stored at Google without Google's permission. A privacy issue is where a third party accesses your data stored at Google with Google's permission but without your permission.
- bdhess 8y ago
  I don’t think those definitions are at all canonical, but are you actually suggesting that Google may have a “privacy issue” per your definition? Even if you assume they’re a bad actor, it’s hard to imagine a rationale for them to let a third party have a go at the data.
  - gregknicholson 8y ago
    > are you actually suggesting that Google may have a “privacy issue” per your definition? Until the GDPR started being enforced, I think it was common practice to collect and sell data without the user's full knowledge and consent. It's a huge change in mindset having to know and explain what they're doing. Even when not signed in, YouTube remembers the sort of video you've watched and suggests similar ones; I didn't explicitly consent to this, and they didn't tell me clearly what data they were collecting. I'm a former Gmail user; I didn't explicitly consent to Google analysing the contents of my email messages; I think a typical person would not expect that. If something “feels creepy”, it's probably a privacy breach. Maybe Google think they have the user's permission. It may be an honest misunderstanding. I'm not saying they're malicious; but I think they have very little incentive to really care about privacy, because their users don't demand it. Third parties will pay for user data. Also, I think you should be able to choose who you trust. You shouldn't be obliged to trust Google (or Microsoft or whoever); I would see that as a monopoly.

fifnir 8y ago

The unavoidable suggested answers in gmail make my skin crawl. I dont want it and i dont want to be reminded that you can read my emails despite my consent for it I guess it's a good reminder that i need to change services

halflings 8y ago
How can an email service work without "reading" your email? Emails need to be indexed to be searcheable etc.
- kerberos84 8y ago
  It does not need to read the body of email in order to work. It can index just the header(to, date, subject) or you can use a program on your computer locally to keep your emails and index&search them.
  - halflings 8y ago
    > It does not need to read the body of email in order to work. It can index just the header(to, date, subject) The header is still personal data. Using the header but avoiding the body does not make much sense. Again, "reading" emails seems to be an arbitrary distinction. Your emails are stored and served to you, so they are read by HTTP servers, by your browser, by many things. The real issue is the use that is made of those readers: an index that allows you to search your emails more efficiently does not seem to be nefarious, but I definitely agree that other nefarious uses are possible (say some company that would use emails to target people in debt or something like that), just not the case with Gmail. > You can use a program on your computer locally to keep your emails and index&search them. Right, but then it's not Gmail anymore, that's just an IMAP mail server with Thunderbird. Gmail started as a smart webmail; being able to quickly search your emails from anywhere, without a desktop client, without fetching thousands of emails before you could perform a search.

x2f10 8y ago

How do I view the data Google has collected on me if I do not have a Google account?