And now let's take a look at Google
by Volker Weber
Google tracks a lot of your activity as well. And they are very open about that tracking. In fact, you can also turn it off. And you will quickly learn the benefits of some of that tracking. Go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity to see what Google has tracked. From there you can remove whatever you want.
Trust me, this is very scary when you first see it. Every term you ever searched for, every location it has tracked, every Youtube video you have looked at, and so forth.
Don't confuse this with Google Takeout. That is a fantastic feature that lets you download everything you have stored in Google services. All your mail, your contacts, your documents and so forth. Google lets you leave without abandoning your stuff. Every cloud service should have something like Takeout.
Comments
Was TakeOut angeht, werden Sie in Zukunft nach der DSGVO ein Recht auf Herausgabe Ihrer Daten in einem vernünftigen maschinenlesbaren Format haben. Ich gehe also davon aus, dass man sowas in Zukunft öfter sehen dürfte
Vowe, I’m curious to know what e-mail provider you use. I’m thinking about abandoning Gmail and I’m in search for alternatives. Thanks.
My address is hosted by 1&1, but I can answer it both from Google and Microsoft. I do not see a good reason to abandon either.
Well, google is scanning your emails to use the information for advertising. That’s a reason. Their services are good, but not free. I know this, it’s easy to test. I wrote an email once, about a wet cellar. The next 3 weeks I got advertisement for tools to get a cellar dry. ;)
I myself have a google address but am not using it. I just don’t dare to abandon it due to als acquaintances.
About Microsoft i am not sure. I have an account there as well. And am feeling ok about it data protection wise. But I might be wrong. In the end you never know as long as you are not hosting yourself. ;) A good German email provider is posteo.
Google announced last year they were stopping to target ads based on your email content. And of course they are scanning your email. How else would spam filtering work?
It’s not so much the scanning, but the use of the information. Interesting is the fact, that they announced a stop as you mentioned. I did not know that.
I turned off all tracking - search, location, personalized ads or otherwise - in Google a long time ago.
Just checked - my entire Google Takeouts file (without Picasa photos) is 900 kB in size. The largest file is the base "index.html" file. And the ONLY entries in my "myactivity.google.com" is GMail ads. My location timeline ( https://www.google.com/maps/timeline?pb ) is completely empty - it doesn't even show my home address and it has a slightly wrong address for "work".
And all that even though I am a heavy user of Google services such as Maps, Mail, etc.
Which is all pretty cool. I can't see a use case for myself that benefits from knowing my past activity.
