Google is everywhere in our lives. It’s reach into our data extends just as far.
After investigating how much data Facebook had collected about him in his nearly 20 years with the platform, Lock and Code host David Ruiz had similar questions about the other Big Tech platforms in his life, and this time, he turned his attention to Google.
Google dominates much of the modern web. It has a search engine that handles billions of requests a day. Its tracking and metrics service, Google Analytics, is embedded into reportedly 10s of millions of websites. Its Maps feature not only serves up directions around the world, it also tracks traffic patterns across countless streets, highways, and more. Its online services for email (Gmail), cloud storage (Google Drive), and office software (Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides) are household names. And it also runs the most popular web browser in the world, Google Chrome, and the most popular operating system in the world, Android.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, Ruiz explains how he requested his data from Google and what he learned not only about the company, but about himself, in the process. That includes the 142,729 items in his Gmail inbox right now, along with the 8,079 searches he made, 3,050 related websites he visited, and 4,610 YouTube videos he watched in just the past 18 months. It also includes his late-night searches for worrying medical symptoms, his movements across the US as his IP address was recorded when logging into Google Maps, his emails, his photos, his notes, his old freelance work as a journalist, his outdated cover letters when he was unemployed, his teenage-year Google Chrome bookmarks, his flight and hotel searches, and even the searches he made within his own Gmail inbox and his Google Drive.
After digging into the data for long enough, Ruiz came to a frightening conclusion: Google knows whatever the hell it wants about him, it just has to look.
But Ruiz wasn’t happy to let the company’s access continue. So he has a plan.
”I am taking steps to change that [access] so that the next time I ask, “What does Google know about me?” I can hopefully answer: A little bit less.”
Tune in today.
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Show notes and credits:
Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)
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